Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 75

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Could someone rename these categories?

Could someone please rename the following categories to Category:Paleozoic life of Statename? Abyssal (talk) 20:43, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

 Not done Category renames must occur at WP:CFD. — JJMC89 (T·C) 21:04, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

Redirect talk pages with only banners

Per Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)/Archive 139#Redirect_talk_pages_with_only_banners, I'm requesting a bot with the following logic

• If nothing but banners is found on Talk:Barfoo
• and Barfoo redirects to Foobar
• Redirect Talk:Barfoo to Talk:Foobar (but preserve banners)

For an example where this is already done, see WT:NJOURNALS. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:39, 3 May 2017 (UTC)

This is something I have been thinking about for a while. The converse might also be useful. I presume we could also include other standard templates like {{Talk header}}. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 19:21, 4 May 2017 (UTC).

There is no consensus, nor point, in adding {{talk header}} to redirected talk pages. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:11, 4 May 2017 (UTC)

You misunderstand. I presume we could count such pages as "having only banners". All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 20:33, 5 May 2017 (UTC).

Oh, my bad then. Yes, that makes sense. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 06:22, 11 June 2017 (UTC)

I'm still a little hazy as to why the Talk header template would be placed on a page where there should never be any discussion. It seems that it may mislead editors to start up discussions on the redirect talk page.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  13:09, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

(Archived discussion, for posterity.) Sounds like a good idea, working on some code that counts how many pages like this exist. Enterprisey (talk!) 22:54, 5 June 2017 (UTC)

@Enterprisey: Any updates on this? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:26, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

None at the moment, although I can get back to you later today with a possible BRFA. Enterprisey (talk!) 15:44, 11 July 2017 (UTC)

Fortunately, my existing task 10 also works on talk pages of redirects, so development of this should be a lot easier. Enterprisey (talk!) 02:58, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Headbomb and Rich Farmbrough, I was wondering whether I should put {{Redirect category shell}} on the redirects that the bot creates. I think it would be helpful, but we would probably need to come up with an appropriate redirect-sorting template to avoid putting all the redirects into Category:Miscellaneous redirects. Enterprisey (talk!) 04:03, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

Maybe. I'm rather indifferent to it but it's probably not a bad idea. I suppose the best place ask is the redirect category shell talk page. The problem i see is that the redirects are very varied and it would be very hard to determine by bot what type of redirect they are. I don't see what kind of special redirect category could be created for them either.Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 07:44, 12 July 2017 (UTC)

I suspect that Paine Ellsworth (talk · contribs) would have an opinion. Probably it would be useful to identify those that need categorising. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 18:06, 12 July 2017 (UTC).

Thank you for the ping, Rich. Frankly, I see no benefit in changing these talk pages to "hard" redirects, when I've been working diligently to turn them into soft redirects with the {{Talk page of redirect}} template. That template is placed at the TOP of the page above banners and has a link to both the subject page and the talk page of the target. It also has a message that no discussion should take place on that page. I would strongly support a bot project that would place the Talk page of redirect template at the TOP of such talk pages.  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  13:23, 14 July 2017 (UTC)

Discussion started on the redirects WikiProject talk page about whether it's acceptable to add empty rcat shells to all the new redirects this task will create: WT:RE#Adding the shell template to new redirects during a bot task. Enterprisey (talk!) 16:26, 31 July 2017 (UTC)

Doesn't seem to be any traction on the use of the shell. @Paine Ellswort: {{Talk page of redirect}} should likely be used on pages that this bot wouldn't touch (i.e. there are existing discussions / more than banners). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:40, 3 August 2017 (UTC)

You could very well be right. I remember a long time ago having a discussion with an editor (can't remember who, I think it may have been Steel1943) about what to do with talk pages that only have banners and no discussions. I had been converting them to redirects, but the editor convinced me that it would be better to use the {{Talk page of redirect}} template instead. I've been doing that ever since. Didn't really see much difference, since the Talk page of redirect template basically just makes the talk page a "soft redirect".  Paine Ellsworth  ^put'r there  08:23, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Mass-scale moving

Good evening ladies and gentlemen,

There has been a recent discussion on Help talk:IPA#Converting individual help pages for the various languages into subpages of Help:IPA which I would appreciate if you could go take a look at for the full picture.In summary we have to move a massive number of pages en-masse and thus, can any kind samaritan device out any tool/way to automate the tedious procedure.Cheers!Winged Blades ^Godric 04:26, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

@Winged Blades of Godric: Moves done except for Hawaiian, which is move protected. — JJMC89 (T·C) 06:34, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

@Nardog:--Well I believe that's all.Winged Blades ^Godric 13:33, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

@JJMC89:--Many thanks! As a side-note, how did you manage this task?(So that I can take a cue for future purposes!.)Winged Blades ^Godric 13:33, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

@Winged Blades of Godric: I used movepages.py with the -pairsfile parameter. — JJMC89 (T·C) 18:44, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

Relink misdescriptive redirect List of films in the public domain to List of films in the public domain in the United States

In 2009, the list article List of films in the public domain was (quite correctly) moved to List of films in the public domain in the United States. There are over 200 articles that still link to the redirect; a sampling indicates that it's generally in the "See also" section.

Does there exist a bot that can update to use the correct link?

This is not a case of a redirect where the redirect has a correct but less desirable name than the actual target. This is a case where the redirect name is actually inaccurate and misdescriptive; without qualification, "in the public domain" indicates in the public domain worldwide, not merely in the US. I understand and agree that there's nothing inherently wrong in having a redirect in the See also section; this is a limited case where the redirect title is factually wrong and misleading.

I'm no bot-writer, but I suspect it's not worth coding a bot specifically for this, but if this is a task that an existing bot can do, that would be great. I started in on doing them manually ([1], [2], [3], [4]) until I realized how many there were. TJRC (talk) 18:46, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

Probably it could be listed at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Working to have the existing category-rename bots handle it. Anomie⚔ 20:52, 7 August 2017 (UTC)

I agree with TJRC. What I do is generate a list of article titles that contain the string [List of films in the public domain] using wikiget (./wikiget -a "insource:/\[List of films in the public domain\]/") then load that list into AWB and do a plain (non-regex) string replace. -- GreenC 15:55, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Y Done (example) -- GreenC 17:01, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Wonderful, thank you, GreenC! I have tried AWB, but I really had some trouble getting the hang of it. TJRC (talk) 23:27, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Changing around obsolete 50'000 links (checking feasability)

Hi all, the Swiss Office of Statistcs contacted Wikimedia CH to check the possibility to change around 50'000 links. They have changed systems and, consequently, also the structure of the links. It seems that this modification should be done in several lingustic versions and they can provided a sheet listing the old obsolete link and the new one. Do you think that this activity can be done easily? Do we have to contact several wikipedias or is there a bot able to change in several linguistic versions? --Ilario (talk) 09:29, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Hi Ilario. This task sounds like it may be suitable; we have done similar tasks in the past. Can we have some more information about the changes (what they are, for what links etc) so we can see if a bot can do it here on the English Wikipedia? A request filed on the English Wikipedia is only valid for a bot on the English Wikipedia. If you want a bot to edit on the Swiss Wikipedia I believe you will need to file a separate request there. Thanks. TheMagikCow (T) (C) 10:49, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Definitely doable (and something that sounds fun to do). As above, more information would be helpful so we can try to develop the rewrite rules to make it happen. Hasteur (talk) 13:51, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

@TheMagikCow: Is there a Swiss Wikipedia? The country has four official languages: French, German, Italian, and Romansh. Maybe you mean the Romansh Wikipedia, which doesn't have many articles. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:27, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

@Redrose64: Wikimedia CH Wikimedia CH is the Swiss Chapter of the global Wikimedia movement, and officially recognized as such by the Wikimedia Foundation. Hasteur (talk) 19:33, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

OK, but TheMagikCow wrote "on the Swiss Wikipedia". --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:50, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Ahh the 4 separate languages! The point is that each one of the Wikipedias will need separate approval. TheMagikCow (T) (C) 20:09, 4 August 2017 (UTC)

Hi all, I will take contact with my colleague of the French Switzerland to transmit this information. I supposed that the bot had to be approved by more than one language. --Ilario (talk) 13:10, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Hi Ilario I think this may also affect the English Wikipedia - those URLs may be insourced here. You will need to speak to each of the Wikipedias, but if you show us the sturcture of the links, I would be happy to see if any links here need to be changed. TheMagikCow (T) (C) 14:10, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Ok, we have received this information from the Office of statistic but no one reply to our ping at the moment, I suppose that there are still holidays. --Ilario (talk) 17:53, 11 August 2017 (UTC)

Fix for Japan Times URLs

Would it be possible for a bot to change every instance of the dead link "search.japantimes.co.jp" to "www.japantimes.co.jp" to fix references in Japan-related articles? Thanks.--Pawnkingthree (talk) 17:51, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

Pawnkingthree. I checked and there are about 1800 articles (have the list). It would be trivial to replace text, but many are also now tagged with {{dead link}} or |deadurl=yes or converted to a https://web.archive.org/web/2012/http://search.japanatimes... so it will be more serious bot work to untangle correctly. Almost wonder if it wouldn't be easier for someone to do it manually, or supervised with a text replace in AWB and manually undo any extraneous dead tags. -- GreenC 19:21, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, GreenC. If you can send me the list I'll start working on it manually (not familiar with AWB). I would begin with my own area of interest (which is sumo).--Pawnkingthree (talk) 12:48, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Pawnkingthree ... List of search.japantimes. If it becomes too much to do manually, the worst case is convert them with a bot which is easy, and not worry about the dead links stuff. Partly depends what you discover how common it's needed to do something other than change the domain name. -- GreenC 14:27, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll let you know how I get on.--Pawnkingthree (talk) 14:46, 21 August 2017 (UTC)

lang-fa --> lang-prs

Hi there,
I'm looking for a helpful bot who's willing to make a large number of fixes. At the moment, there are many articles directly related to Afghanistan, where the incorrect {lang-fa} template is listed in the lede, instead of the corrected {lang-prs} template. All the {lang-fa} templates on these articles, i.e. articles about buildings, people (post-19th century), cities, towns, rivers, provinces, mountains, etc. need to be changed to the correct {lang-prs} template. So basically changing/adding 3 letters on every one of these articles.

The official name of the variant of the Persian language spoken in Afghanistan is Dari, and it has its own lang-template. However, until 2015, no such template existed on Wiki, hence people carelessly dropped the lang-fa template on all these articles. All the best, - LouisAragon (talk) 23:19, 13 August 2017 (UTC)

LouisAragon, unless there is a specific list of pages that need fixing, this task will not be given to a bot on account of context and the fact that there are 79k pages that call {{lang-fa}}. In other words, there are a huge number of pages that use the template, and without knowing which ones to change the process cannot be automated. Primefac (talk) 14:00, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

@Primefac: got it. I'll try to narrow it down then. What do you think about beginning, for a start, with all the articles listed in Category:Afghanistan_stubs, Category:Populated places in Afghanistan and Category:Cities in Afghanistan, including all their respective subcategories? Will the bot be able to process this? - LouisAragon (talk) 18:12, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

I mean, sure, if they almost all need changing. Of course, I randomly checked a dozen or so in the first two categories and none of them used either template, so a wider net may be needed. A couple in the third category already used -prs. If the rest of the articles are similarly template-free, you're probably looking at only 100ish pages, which could/should probably be manually done (i.e. it's not really worth a bot task for <250 edits). Primefac (talk) 21:15, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

@Primefac: The thing is, there are genuinely quite alot of articles that require this fix. Though not "every" single article has the erroneous template on these "Afghanistan-related articles", there are still really alot of them that do. I'm pretty sure no one would be willing to do that manually. Just imagine scouting every single article in order to see whether it has template or not. :O I just handpicked those three category examples in order to see whether such mass changes would even be possible (I'm really anything but a "veteran" regarding this particular area of Wiki, i.e. bots 'n stuff, hence I had no clue of what a bot is capeable of).

Apart from the 3 categories I mentioned above, all the articles listed in Category:Afghan people, Category:Cities in Afghanistan, Category:Education in Afghanistan and Category:Mountain ranges of Afghanistan should, preferably, be added to the to-do list of the bot as well. Altogether, I'm pretty certain that the articles in these 7 major categories, that contain the wrong lang-fa template, number much more than 200/250 altogether. Category:Afghan people by itself contains many hundreds of articles for example.

Its really important that all these templates get corrected, because, yeah, otherwise people will continue to add this erroneous template for another century to come. - LouisAragon (talk) 22:22, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

You don't need to look at every article in the category. You can use petscan to search for pages in a particular category that contain a given template. Here's a sample search that shows all articles in Category:Mountain ranges of Afghanistan and its subcategories that use {{lang-fa}}. – Jonesey95 (talk) 22:48, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Even if someone makes a list of the categories, it's still WP:CONTEXTBOT because a bot isn't going to know whether any particular instance of {{lang-fa}} is actually for Dari or if it really is Persian after all. Anomie⚔ 23:03, 23 August 2017 (UTC)

Bot for automatically dating redlinks

I don't know how practical this might be, but I thought it would be helpful if redlinks could be tagged as such and a bot could then automatically add the month/year the redlink (or redlink template) was added.

So, for instance, if I create a link to John Simon (author), which is a redlink, one of the following would happen:

1. Ideal case: the bot would note the redlink (if that's even possible) and insert a tag with the month and year that the redlink was added.
2. Also good: I or someone else notices that the link is a redlink and tag it with a template such as Template:Nolink. The bot would detect the use of the template and flesh it out with the month/year.

I feel this would be extremely helpful for determining how long a redlink has been extant, and would give editors an indication of the likelihood that the redlink might ever become a bluelink.

Never done a bot request before, so apologies if I've horribly mangled this or such. Thanks! DonIago (talk) 13:30, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

I can see this being useful. Maybe we could somehow use it to build up an index of the most common redlinks - I know we have WP:TOPRED for the most viewed redlinks but not the most frequently created, and it's broken now anyway. We could also use it to look for simple errors, like someone writes an article with a link to Wold War I and doesn't correct it. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 13:41, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

This is possible. I think there would need to be consensus for it, as there's a lot of articles with redlinks. Regarding the typo fixing (if that's what you meant), it's better for a human to do it. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 13:56, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

I kind of love that you're both already taking this further than I had it in my head (smile). I'd definitely be wary of a bot "auto-correcting" redlinks, but I like the notion of having them compiled somewhere for review.

I was only thinking of this being a "going forward" bot, but if it was able to scan for existing redlinks as well, that would be nifty...though I'm guessing it wouldn't be able to determine when redlinks were originally created (much less if a bluelink became a redlink), so any data would start off with a huge spike when the bot went active. DonIago (talk) 14:09, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Do we need to re-scan all revisions to get the status of all redlinks? --Kanashimi (talk) 14:12, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

The list probably would need to be refreshed to capture, e.g. redlinks that have been delinked, but I could see that being a "once a month" or even "once every few months" process. I don't know whether it's more intensive to do regular scans or fewer but wider-scope ones. DonIago (talk) 14:47, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

It could be possible using Special:ApiSandbox#action=query&format=json&prop=links and the continue parameter, but it'll definitely take a very, very long time. I'm guessing 10 per hour would be the best. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 15:08, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

If the comment above about humans fixing typos was in response to my suggestion, yes, that's what I meant. A human could scan the list of redlinks to spot obvious errors and then fix them manually. I wouldn't trust a bot to do the corrections. Ivanvector (^Talk/_Edits) 15:11, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

How about a bot changing all redlinks to templates with date mark, and when we have some articles created, the template will just show the link as normal wikilinks; so we won't need scan all revisions? --Kanashimi (talk) 15:37, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

I'm not sure I'm following this? DonIago (talk) 23:11, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

That would create some very confusing formatting. Perhaps we could have a bot template red links, and then turn around and un-template links that are no longer red, but I think the easier course of action would be to delineate lists of oldest red links. bd2412 T 14:40, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

So, as someone new to this process, what are the next steps here? There seems to be a general consensus that it's a good idea to create a bot to track and date redlinks, though I'm not sure there's agreement on the best form that should take. Something would certainly be preferable to nothing, I think. DonIago (talk) 18:39, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

It's not clear to me what the proposal is here. If the proposal is to make lists of redlinks in the bot's userspace, someone can probably just do it as long as it's not disruptive (e.g. editing constantly or making thousands of subpages). If the proposal is to edit articles to wrap redlinks in a template, Needs wider discussion. – get a strong consensus for it at WP:VPR. Anomie⚔ 10:47, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

I'm with Anomie on this. A list of redlinks with date of the oldest link and how many articles they occur in would be useful. But you need to filter out redlinks in templates, otherwise the top of the list would be dominated by redlinks in widely used templates. Using a bot to add a date parameter to redlinks would disfigure lots of articles for little obvious benefit. There may even be a disbenefit as making redlinks more clunky might discourage peple from adding them and even encourage people to remove them. ϢereSpielChequers 11:26, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Note: Wikipedia:Templates with red links already lists those red links, although it may be out of date. bd2412 T 12:58, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

My original goal was to come up with a mechanism similar to the way using Template:Citation needed without specifying additional params will lead a bot to automatically date the template. The idea being that editors can then tell how long a CN template, or in this case a redlink, has been in existence. Lists of them weren't really in the scope of my original request. If they're of interest to others then maybe they're worth pursuing, but that's not a goal I had in mind when I submitted the request. As an editor, I just want to be able to, if editing an article, see whether This is a redlink has been redlinked for a month, or for several years, so that I can make a more informed decision as to whether a redlink is really merited. Even if this was only applied to redlinks going forward (i.e. no searching through existing ones) I feel it would be an improvement. DonIago (talk) 14:40, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

At the risk of coming off as badgering, any chance of getting this moved along? DonIago (talk) 19:23, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

You can go start an RFC on WP:VPR to try to get consensus for your idea as well as anyone else. And it's not too likely that anyone else is going to do it for you. Anomie⚔ 17:05, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

Done.Wikipedia:Village_pump_(proposals)#RfC_on_bot/template_for_dating_redlinks_automagically DonIago (talk) 19:46, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Wayback Machine

Would it be possible for a bot to archive each and every references cited on a particular requested WP page? Doing so manually consume a lot of time when there are hundreds of references on a page. --Saqib (talk) 15:27, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Like User:InternetArchiveBot? Anomie⚔ 18:42, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Saqib as noted by Anomie, IABot is the tool. For every ref (including live ones) go the article History tab, click "fix dead links" (top row), this directs to an external tool (requires login just press "OK") where it gives a check-box option to archive every link. -- GreenC 19:35, 25 August 2017 (UTC)

Bot to check deadlinks in Featured material

Re this conversation, User:InternetArchiveBot does a great job scanning our 5,000,000 articles for deadlinks and fixing them, but it moves very slowly. The FA Coordinators agree that it would be useful to keep Featured material patrolled much more regularly. We could do this by manually dumping a list of article names into the tool, but that's not rigorous and a working 'Featureddeadlink bot' could presumably quite happily also patrol FLs, other FT articles and even GAs. So perhaps the request is a bot that will initially patrol the FAs only, with a view to expanding the remit to other quality material once it's proved itself. That level of detail I can leave to your expertise. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 09:44, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

I would advise against an entirely new bot to do this. IABot has a high level of complexity and is very advanced to account for a slew of problems archive bots encounter when making runs. If anything, a bot can be made to regularly submit bot jobs to IABot, which will have IABot regularly patrol FAs, GAs, and other desired list of articles. Besides IABot maintains a large central DB of URLs on every wiki it runs on, so this method would be a lot easier. If anyone wants to write a bot to have IABot regularly scan requested articles, please ping me. I can help get the bot set up to interface with IABot.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 09:49, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

@Dweller and GreenC: ^ GreenC's bot already communicates with IABot.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 09:55, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

I like your idea of a bot to feed IABot. Recreating the wheel is a bad idea and it makes the task a lot simpler. --Dweller (talk) Become old fashioned! 10:01, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

Anyone that is interested in setting this bot up, the documentation for interfacing with IABot is m:InternetArchiveBot/API and the particular function you want to call is action=submitbotjob. If you need any help, just ping me. I would still recommend get the task approved first.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 10:33, 22 August 2017 (UTC)

BRFA filed -- GreenC 13:35, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Fixing broken links to the New York Observer

I have been tagging lots of broken links to the New York Observer, but most of the tags that I added have been removed. Since the Internet Archive Bot is unable to repair these links, is there another way that we can update them? Jarble (talk) 19:54, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

If there is a standard issue with all of these links that a computer could fix - and does not need human discretion to do so (WP:CONTEXTBOT) it may be possible. Without knowing detail about the issue and the fix I can't say. With some more details I would happily look at getting these done. TheMagikCow (T) (C) 13:19, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Scrape some data from WP:WBFAN

I have been collecting statistical data on WP:FAC for over a year now; see this thread for details. It would be a big help for certain kinds of reporting if I could convert a historical revision of WP:WBFAN into a simple list of editor/count pairs. Any format of output would be fine; table, comma separated list -- anything predictable. I just need to convert the names with wrapped star lists into names with numbers of stars, along with the date of the revision.

Ideally this would be something I could run at will, but if someone runs this and sends me a file with the results that would work too.

The benefit to Wikipedia is that we are trying to make it easier for first-time nominators to succeed at FAC, but we can't know if we're succeeding without information about who had WBFAN stars and when they got them. Thanks for any help with this. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 13:37, 9 August 2017 (UTC)

Dealing with Mdann52 (talk) 21:37, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

This is done; Mdann52 has sent me the results. Thank you very much! Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 12:40, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Null bot on everything that transcludes Infobox journal

Template:Infobox journal (talk · history · transclusions · logs · subpages)

If someone could do that, that would be much appreciated. We've recently added some redirect detection/creation logic to the template, and it would be nice to know which articles are in need of review. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:45, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

Doing... — JJMC89 (T·C) 20:39, 29 August 2017 (UTC)

JJMC89 (talk · contribs) Have you started? Because if you have, it doesn't seem to be working. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:40, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

@Headbomb: I made a typo when trying to start the job, so I've restarted it correctly now. — JJMC89 (T·C) 15:24, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Why write a bot when we already have Joe's Null Bot (talk · contribs)? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:50, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

I didn't write anything. I'm using Pywikibot's touch.py. — JJMC89 (T·C) 15:24, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

Thanks! Category:Articles with missing ISO 4 redirects is definitely populating now! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:37, 30 August 2017 (UTC)

@JJMC89:: The infobox template has been massively updated with automated search functionality. If you could run the bot again, this time only on Category:Articles with missing ISO 4 redirects, that would be super helpful! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:58, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

@Headbomb:  Doing... — JJMC89 (T·C) 00:13, 2 September 2017 (UTC)

ISO 4 redirect creation bot

To help clear up the backlog in Category:Articles with missing ISO 4 redirects, if a bot could

• Parse every article containing {{Infobox journal}}, retrieve |abbreviation=J. Foo. Some articles will contain multiple infoboxes.
• If J. Foo. exists and is tagged with {{R from ISO 4}}
  • Create J Foo with

#REDIRECT[[Article containing Infobox journal]]
{{R from ISO 4}}

• • If J Foo already exists, make sure it is tagged with {{R from ISO 4}}, and remove any other {{R from ...}} templates present (like {{R from abbreviation}}/{{R from acronym}}).
• Null edit the original article containing the infobox with |abbreviation=J. Foo.

Thanks! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:57, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

@Headbomb: Wikipedia:Bots/Requests for approval/Mdann52 bot 13 Mdann52 (talk) 10:37, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Broken links to aolnews.com

Wikipedia has hundreds of articles that cite AOL News, but all of the links to this site are now broken. I tried using IABot, but it could not find archived URLs for these references. Is there another bot that can add archive URLs for all of these links? Jarble (talk) 17:12, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Are they broken in the sense of permanent dead, or fixable by changing to a different URL at aolnews? -- GreenC 17:42, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

@GreenC: As far as I know, all links to aolnews.com are now redirected to the front page of aol.com. It may be possible to recover the original articles from the Internet Archive, but IABot is apparently unable to do this. Jarble (talk) 21:25, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Reported here. There might be a way to solve this checking with Cyberpower678. -- GreenC 21:48, 1 September 2017 (UTC)

Jarble, IABot is currently rescuing aolnews.com where it can or leaving a dead link tag. If you see any it missed let me know. Should be done in an hour or so. -- GreenC 14:33, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

A bot for creating articles for ISO standards

I have noticed that there are a lot of ISO standards that do not have an article on Wikipedia. Considering the fact that there are a lot of ISO standards (by my estimate, over 21000 of them in English alone, some that have possibly been updated), of which (rough estimate) maybe 10% - 20% have an article, the number of ISO standards could potentially warrant some automated help. Since I couldn't find a concerted effort to document ISO standards in Wikipedia, I thought it'd be useful to debate whether it would be desirable and feasible to use a bot to increase Wikipedia's coverage of the ISO standards.

Should Wikipedia cover ISO standards extensively? Well-known ISO standards like the ISO 9000 and 27000 families obviously meet notability standards, but lesser-known standards might not. In my opinion, considering the fact that the ISO's work constitutes global standards, there is a case to be made, and there is most certainly precedent for jobs like this.

Since I don't have any previous experience with writing Wikipedia bots, I thought I'd chime in here first. Would this be something that would be useful for Wikipedia, and would it be feasible to create valuable articles or article stubs this way? There is information available from the [website] in a structured form that could go some way towards creating articles, and each standard publishes some metadata about the standard and usually has a description (see for instance 1, 2, 3.

I don't know of any project that is already working towards incorporating information about international standards, or ISO standards specifically, into Wikipedia, nor a bot that works in a related field. If this might be useful, I might very well be interested in writing a bot that either writes stubs or automatic articles on ISO standards, prepares drafts, keeps metadata about ISO standards up-to-date, or something along those lines. I'd gladly hear some feedback. Nietvoordekat (talk) 11:09, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Nietvoordekat, while I admit to only having a general knowledge of this subject, I suspect that such an undertaking would fall afoul of guidelines similar to WP:NASTCRIT (i.e. "this isn't notable enough for it's own article"). WP:AST generally goes by "if it exists, but isn't notable, redirect". However, if we were to create a redirect for every ISO code, we'd end up with 100 000 pages total. Even if we went by what was on the list of ISO codes we're still looking at about 2500 new redirects. Doable, yes. Necessary? Maybe.

For a creation of this sort of size/scale, I think getting community input would be worthwhile, if only to see if there is a want/need for this sort of mass creation.

If there is, feel free to ping me and I'll be happy to put in a BRFA. Primefac (talk) 13:01, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

simple string substitution in external URLs

A very useful news site in a specialised field (The Week in Chess) has changed domains at least twice, meaning there are (at a guess) hundreds of refs or external links to change. They would all change in a regular way (i.e. simple string replacement, or at worst regular expression replacement). There has got to be an already existing bot to do this. Can someone point me in the right direction? Adpete (talk) 12:32, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

It might be better to make a template for these links so that if the web site or link format changes, you only have to change the template in one place to fix all of the links. – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:30, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

If you have any more details eg. old url and new url examples and the changes between them, I can have a look at doing this. TheMagikCow (T) (C) 15:56, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

It's pretty simple. Every URL beginning with "http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/twic" needs to instead begin with "http://theweekinchess.com/html/twic". Note these are not the complete URLs, but anything after that is unchanged. e.g. at Baadur Jobava, reference 2 needs to change from http://www.chesscenter.com/twic/twic646.html#6 to http://theweekinchess.com/html/twic646.html#6 . I'm happy to run it if given some pointers. But if you want to run it, thanks, that'd be great. I'd be curious to hear how many URLs get changed, if you do.

And to Jonesey95, yes a template could be a good idea too, though enforcing compliance can be difficult, so I'd prefer to do the bot in the first instance. Adpete (talk) 23:22, 31 August 2017 (UTC)

Adpete, I think the best way forward would be to create a {{cite web}} wrapper (maybe {{cite WiC}} or {{cite The Week in Chess}}?) that links to the website. After this is done, a bot could go through and replace all extant uses with the template. Thoughts? Primefac (talk) 12:50, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Ran the numbers; looks like 422 pages with the twic/twic in the URL that need changing. Definitely something a bot would be good for. The other 100ish point to different places. Primefac (talk) 12:54, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for listing those links! If we're going to make a wrapper, I think it should be {{cite TWIC}}, because The Week in Chess uses the all-capital acronym TWIC. The main downside to the template is enforcing compliance but I guess it'll be ok. First let me see if I can find all or most of those 100 "other" links, because that might affect the format of the bot and/or template. Adpete (talk) 23:12, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

Keeping track of cross-space moves....

In conjunction with the discussion raised at this discussion, it will be probably helpful for the community to get an idea about the numbers and keep a track of the articles that are draftified from main-space--in a friendly format.SoWhy has written a SQL query for the purpose.I seek for the development of a bot that will maintain a list of articles which are draftified along with necessary info such as the time of draftification, draftifying editor, article creator, last edit date etc. in a tabular format and that the table will be updated in a regular period of time.Thanks!Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 11:49, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

The query Godric mentions only counts article moves where the creation of the redirect was suppressed (AND log.log_params RLIKE 'noredir";s:1'). A bot should probably also find pages moved with a redirect where the redirect was later deleted as WP:R2. Also maybe list prior AFDs or MFDs for the article/draft. Regards SoWhy 12:02, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Strike that, I just noticed a flaw in the query. The query actually finds both because I missed a part of the comment. I fixed it to only show those where the redirect was suppressed and this one should find those where the redirect was created. Regards SoWhy 07:52, 28 August 2017 (UTC)

Second SoWhy.@SoWhy:--As prior AfDs do you mean articles which are once deleted as a consequence of an AfD and then draftified on re-creation?Otherwise, I don't think anybody would draftify an article which has been a voyager to a Afd/Declined Prod.Winged Blades of Godric^{On leave} 12:09, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

Draftifying can be the result of an AFD, so listing prior AFDs makes sense. I suppose the bot can also check the XFD and display the result, like my AFD close analyzer but probably not all results correctly. Regards SoWhy 12:12, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

P. H. Barnes is a page created in main space that survived Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/P. H. Barnes in 2016. A few days ago it was included in a potential bulk AWB move to draft space[5] but, after being advised on IRC that bulk moves might be controversial, the editor backtracked[6] and the whole matter is under consultation at WP:AN#Poorly references sports biographies. Thincat (talk) 13:53, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

I now see from the edit summaries that a move to userspace was contemplated (the consultation is unclear) but it does show that experienced editors, in good faith, can consider that moves of AFD-surviving articles can be appropriate. Also see Sir Edward Antrobus, 8th Baronet which is under consideration in the same way, having existed for nine years with many "real" editors. So numbers of editors and lifetime of article are also relevant statistics in a table. I suspect if the moves are done without removing categories then a bot will fill the omission so pages may enter draft space with no edits (except bot or maintenance) in the last six months. Thincat (talk) 14:13, 27 August 2017 (UTC)

@Winged Blades of Godric, SoWhy, and Thincat: I've drafted an example report below.

Example for 2017-09-02 as of 20:46, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Page Target Mover Move date/time Move summary Creator Creation Editors Last edit Notes Costs of warships 1936-1945 Draft:Costs of warships 1936-1945 User:Rentier 2017-09-02T00:48:38Z barely started list, unsourced User:Janat08 2017-03-09T22:02:19Z 6 2017-09-03T13:32:37Z Revival (Selena Gomez music) Draft:Revival (Selena Gomez song) User:Joaofranciscoaugusto 2017-09-02T02:11:21Z User:Another Believer 2015-09-11T23:23:11Z 10 2017-09-04T17:31:30Z Brenda Strassfeld Draft:Brenda Strassfeld User:Sulfurboy 2017-09-02T02:32:04Z afc article that was not approved. moving back to draft space. User:Jgrrrrrga 2017-08-26T20:30:53Z 4 2017-09-03T17:03:09Z Sanjok Acharya Draft:Sanjok Acharya User:HariKrishna123 2017-09-02T04:14:14Z This is incomplete. User:Fab s3 2015-06-27T15:00:19Z 17 2017-09-02T04:14:13Z Bina Rothblatt Draft:Bina Rothblatt User:Robertgombos 2017-09-02T05:19:32Z Undersourced, incubate in draftspace ([[User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js|via script]]) User:Smorgan63 2017-05-08T15:09:49Z 9 2017-09-02T05:19:34Z Dror Harish Draft:Dror Harish User:Robertgombos 2017-09-02T05:22:14Z Undersourced, incubate in draftspace ([[User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js|via script]]) User:Galyaharish 2017-05-06T19:16:12Z 10 2017-09-02T05:22:17Z Mdu Ntuli Draft:Mdu Ntuli User:Robertgombos 2017-09-02T06:11:27Z Undersourced, incubate in draftspace ([[User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js|via script]]) User:Buki457 2017-04-15T07:39:27Z 8 2017-09-02T06:11:30Z Milos Andric Draft:Milos Andric User:Robertgombos 2017-09-02T06:17:25Z Undersourced, incubate in draftspace ([[User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js|via script]]) User:Henrbren 2017-04-05T10:28:20Z 11 2017-09-02T06:17:27Z Patrick Mackaronis Draft:Patrick Mackaronis User:Robertgombos 2017-09-02T06:25:02Z Undersourced, incubate in draftspace ([[User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js|via script]]) User:Ralum23 2017-05-11T09:45:52Z 5 2017-09-02T06:25:04Z Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Patrick Mackaronis Dark Universe (Universal Monsters) Draft:Dark Universe (film studio) User:Booyahhayoob 2017-09-02T06:41:21Z Undiscussed move back to article space User:Rreemmett 2012-05-08T14:18:29Z 195 2017-09-04T17:35:17Z Antonio T. de Nicolas Draft:Antonio T. De Nicolás User:Robertgombos 2017-09-02T09:14:55Z Undersourced, incubate in draftspace ([[User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js|via script]]) User:Plantdrew1 2017-08-11T23:57:52Z 3 2017-09-02T09:14:56Z David Roberts (academic) Draft:David Roberts (academic) User:Robertgombos 2017-09-02T09:27:22Z Undersourced, incubate in draftspace ([[User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js|via script]]) User:Magerski 2017-05-31T12:31:54Z 7 2017-09-02T09:27:24Z Aamer Butt (cricketer) Draft:Aamer Butt (cricketer) User:BlackJack 2017-09-02T12:51:39Z correcting previous move User:02blythed 2017-02-26T14:33:49Z 10 2017-09-02T18:47:24Z Wikipedia:Miscellany for deletion/Draft:Aamer Butt (cricketer) Villages of Sirsa district Draft:Villages of Sirsa district (Haryana, India) User:Robertgombos 2017-09-02T13:31:06Z Undersourced, incubate in draftspace ([[User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js|via script]]) User:Dhillonguys 2017-09-01T18:53:43Z 2 2017-09-02T13:31:07Z Girish R Gowda Draft:Girish R Gowda User:Robertgombos 2017-09-02T13:33:55Z Undersourced, incubate in draftspace ([[User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js|via script]]) User:Kavyasrao7 2017-09-01T18:22:17Z 7 2017-09-02T13:33:56Z Dan Edward Williams Draft:Dan Edward Williams User:Robertgombos 2017-09-02T13:35:03Z Undersourced, incubate in draftspace ([[User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js|via script]]) User:Colebeck 2017-09-01T18:09:03Z 7 2017-09-02T13:35:04Z Pathachakra FC Draft:Pathachakra FC User:Robertgombos 2017-09-02T13:41:04Z Undersourced, incubate in draftspace ([[User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js|via script]]) User:Comp-2 2017-09-01T16:52:19Z 3 2017-09-02T13:41:05Z Deny Setiyadi Draft:Deny Setiyadi User:Robertgombos 2017-09-02T13:47:04Z Undersourced, incubate in draftspace ([[User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js|via script]]) User:Frankenasian 2017-09-01T16:29:19Z 5 2017-09-02T16:24:27Z F.C. Kerala Draft:F.C. Kerala User:My name is not dave 2017-09-02T17:08:38Z not ready for mainspace User:Mohansir 2017-09-02T17:04:34Z 2 2017-09-02T17:08:45Z Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/F.C. Kerala Ljubiša M. Bojić Draft:Ljubiša M. Bojić User:Justlettersandnumbers 2017-09-02T18:55:01Z Undersourced, incubate in draftspace ([[User:Evad37/MoveToDraft.js|via script]]) User:Ruben192 2017-08-28T01:39:00Z 5 2017-09-02T18:55:04Z Aamer Iqbal (cricketer, born 1990) Draft:Aamer Iqbal (cricketer, born 1990) User:BlackJack 2017-09-02T19:13:11Z correcting last move User:02blythed 2017-02-28T21:46:03Z 8 2017-09-02T19:13:37Z Dave Houpapa Draft:Dave Houpapa User:BlackJack 2017-09-02T19:21:03Z correcting previous move User:210.54.106.129 2007-03-29T06:15:45Z 19 2017-09-02T19:21:23Z Mohammad Nuruzzaman Draft:Mohammad Nuruzzaman User:BlackJack 2017-09-02T19:26:56Z correcting previous move User:02blythed 2007-07-04T10:30:15Z 25 2017-09-02T19:27:23Z Mohammad Shakil Draft:Mohammad Shakil User:BlackJack 2017-09-02T19:43:24Z correcting previous move User:02blythed 2007-06-14T18:04:59Z 18 2017-09-02T19:43:50Z Mosaddek Hossain (cricketer, born 1983) Draft:Mosaddek Hossain (cricketer, born 1983) User:BlackJack 2017-09-02T19:46:22Z correcting previous move User:02blythed 2007-06-28T10:15:39Z 26 2017-09-02T19:47:26Z Nazmul Hossain Milon Draft:Nazmul Hossain Milon User:BlackJack 2017-09-02T19:49:48Z correcting previous move User:02blythed 2007-07-03T11:00:12Z 29 2017-09-02T19:50:06Z Rana Miah Draft:Rana Miah User:BlackJack 2017-09-02T19:52:17Z correcting previous move User:02blythed 2007-07-09T10:38:10Z 23 2017-09-02T19:52:34Z Sumon Barua Draft:Sumon Barua User:BlackJack 2017-09-02T19:54:49Z correcting previous move User:02blythed 2007-07-24T10:47:41Z 22 2017-09-02T19:55:06Z Sumon Saha Draft:Sumon Saha User:BlackJack 2017-09-02T19:55:44Z correcting previous move User:02blythed 2007-07-24T10:53:02Z 30 2017-09-02T19:56:01Z Syed Aamer Ali Draft:Syed Aamer Ali User:BlackJack 2017-09-02T19:56:52Z correcting previous move User:02blythed 2016-06-25T23:26:02Z 9 2017-09-02T19:57:10Z Taposh Ghosh Draft:Taposh Ghosh User:BlackJack 2017-09-02T20:02:23Z correcting previous move User:02blythed 2007-07-24T11:10:44Z 24 2017-09-02T20:02:39Z Ted Adams (cricketer) Draft:Ted Adams (cricketer) User:BlackJack 2017-09-02T20:06:28Z correcting previous move User:02blythed 2016-06-28T01:05:00Z 14 2017-09-02T20:06:48Z Yasin Arafat Draft:Yasin Arafat User:BlackJack 2017-09-02T20:10:05Z correcting previous move User:02blythed 2007-07-26T10:52:45Z 19 2017-09-02T20:10:22Z Wayne Aberhart Draft:Wayne Aberhart User:BlackJack 2017-09-02T20:11:00Z correcting previous move User:02blythed 2016-06-25T22:24:47Z 11 2017-09-02T20:11:20Z Sir Edward Antrobus, 8th Baronet Draft:Sir Edward Antrobus, 8th Baronet User:BlackJack 2017-09-02T20:23:14Z correcting previous move User:02blythed 2008-09-27T12:08:37Z 26 2017-09-03T06:42:19Z The Cherokee Observer Draft:The Cherokee Observer User:Atlantic306 2017-09-02T20:41:39Z very incomplete User:Devilk100d 2017-09-02T17:39:17Z 3 2017-09-02T20:41:39Z Cambria AFC Draft:Cambria AFC User:Atlantic306 2017-09-02T22:11:37Z incomplete, no references User:Calumdhill5 2017-09-02T10:23:49Z 4 2017-09-03T11:21:22Z

Please let me know if you have any comments on it. — JJMC89 (T·C) 23:11, 3 September 2017 (UTC)

@JJMC89:--Can't we have clickable editor names and the move diff. linked-to in the move-summary field.Overall, it'a great job! Thanks!:)Winged Blades ^Godric 03:45, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

@Winged Blades of Godric: I've added links for users. I could link the move log, but I'm not going to try to parse the history for a diff. — JJMC89 (T·C) 20:55, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

This looks great! I am going to be away for a bit so here are some quick comments. The bulk draftification I alluded to above took place on 31 August 2017,[7] causing chaos for the cricket wikiproject. A useful cautionary tale. To spot such erroneous actions date of page creation, number of editors and quality/importance of article are relevant – as well as one surviving AFD a Good article was included (the latter self-reverted). Possibly such indicators of "quality" could be flagged in the present AFD field. Number of links can be an issue when pages are moved on the basis of fewer claimed links than actually exist. An emphasised indication could be given when both source and target have both been deleted (draft space pages not edited recently manually are vulnerable to speedy deletion whereas in main space being "abandoned" may well not be a problem. Thincat (talk) 04:48, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

@Thincat: I've added creation and number of editors. I can add GA/FA/FL, but it will require parsing the page for the template (e.g. {{Good article}}), which I was hoping to avoid. — JJMC89 (T·C) 20:55, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

Yes, I can see that indicators of importance are problematic. Creation date and number of editors form a proxy of sorts. Are you including moves between main and user space as well as between main and draft? On the face if it they are both relevant. Why not give this a spin and tweaks could be made based on experience? Could lists be kept separately for each day so it is possible to review what has been going on? Thincat (talk) 17:13, 7 September 2017 (UTC)

See draftification reports as a starting point. — JJMC89 (T·C) 01:40, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Administrator "you messed up" notifications

Just in the last few days, I've twice messed up when blocking users: I left the block template and forgot to levy a block. This caused confusion in one circumstance, and in the other, another admin levied a longer block because it looked like the person had already come off an earlier shorter block.

What if we had a bot that would notify admins who added a block template without blocking the user? I'm envisioning the bot finding new substitutions of all block templates, checking to see whether the user really is blocked, and leaving a "you messed up" message (comparable to what BracketBot did) to remind the admin to go back and fix the situation. Sometimes one admin will block and another will leave the message; that's fine, so the bot shouldn't pay attention to who actually levied the block. And bonus points if the bot finds that a non-admin left the template on a non-blocked user's talk page; the bot could leave a note quoting the {{uw-block}} documentation: Only administrators can block users; adding a block template does not constitute a block. See RFAA to request that a user be blocked. Finally, since actually doing the blocking is quick and simple, we don't need the bot to wait a long time; sometimes you need to compose a long and thoughtful message explaining the block, but you don't need to do that when using Special:Block. Nyttend (talk) 01:30, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Sounds more like a job for a EF, warning editors who add a block template to an unblocked user's talk page, of the same kind as trying to save an edit without an edit summary. Ben · Salvidrim! ✉ 03:16, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

An edit filter is an interesting idea. Especially when I am blocking for a reason that is better described in writing than with a template, I tend to write my block reason before actually clicking the block button; it's so that I won't get yelled at for blocking someone without a reason (or worse yet, the wrong or incomplete reason, which appears punishable by desysopping nowadays). I suspect, though, that it would be a pretty complex filter that uses a lot of resources, so we should be able to answer how frequently this happens, and whether it is worth the impact on all editing in the project to have this filter. (People forget how impactful these filters are; just try opening a page on a slow connection and you'll see it...) Risker (talk) 04:10, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

An edit filter is almost certainly not possible because editors may save block templates before actually blocking. Some existing tools may do the same. ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 20:31, 20 August 2017 (UTC)

Fair point, though it would almost surely be useful to have an edit filter to forbid non-admins from placing a template on a non-blocked user's page. (The original concern still stands, but if that EF is implemented, the "you screwed up" bot will need only look at administrators' edits). Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 16:56, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Social Security Death Index (SSDI)

Articles about deceased U.S. persons often cite the Social Security Death Index, which lies behind a paywall at ancestry.com. An example may be found at George Luz. I have no idea of the total count. The SSDI is also available at familysearch.org for free. The version at Family Search does not display the social security number; the version at ancestry once did but, according to our page no longer does. Converting from ancestry to family search will, I think, require a little human effort and judgment. I don't know if that raises a WP:SYNTHESIS flag. Is it possible to search for uses of the SSDI at ancestry and put them into a list or, preferably, a hidden (Wikipedia:?) category so they can be changed to the Family Search version?--Georgia Army Vet Contribs Talk 00:53, 5 September 2017 (UTC)

Special:LinkSearch/http://ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com/? Or perhaps Special:LinkSearch/http://ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com/cgi-bin/ssdi.cgi if there are legitimate links to the base page at ssdi.rootsweb.ancestry.com. Anomie⚔ 02:38, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

That should do it, thanks. Call the request closed.--Georgia Army Vet Contribs Talk 21:30, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

Change all "trans_title" and "accessdate" to "trans-title" and "access-date", respectively

Both params (trans_title and accessdate) are deprecated and give an "ugly" warning to the readers. Changing them to trans-title and access-date, respectively, eliminate the warning. MYS77 ^✉ 11:43, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

I could do this. -- Magioladitis (talk) 13:46, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

See two sections above. The first part of this request is already in progress. The second part of the request is not valid. |accessdate= is a valid parameter. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:24, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

• Sorry, I didn't see the request previously. MYS77 ^✉ 15:06, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

{{archive now}}

Adding links from Google Scholar

I've been manually adding lots of links to references in articles like this one. Does Wikipedia have any bots that can automate this process using Google Scholar or something similar? Jarble (talk) 21:10, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

Try WP:OABOT. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:17, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

@Headbomb: OABot only works with articles that use citation templates. Does Wikipedia have any tools that can automatically format references using these templates? Jarble (talk) 21:17, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

Automatically, no. But you can enable refToolbar / citation expander in your preferences, and that can help converting links to proper references. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:43, 6 September 2017 (UTC)

@Headbomb: If there isn't a tool that can automatically format citations, we could easily create one using a citation parser. Jarble (talk) 13:36, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

WikiProject Asessment banner replacement

I am making this request on behalf of WikiProject Finance and WikiProject Investment. The two projects are merging so there are two things that a bot is needed for:

1. Replace all {{WikiProject Investment}} banners on talk pages of articles that were only assessed by the Investment project with the {{WikiProject Finance}} banner.
2. Remove the WikiProject Investment banner from pages that were already assessed by WikiProject Finance.

It would help immensely! Cheers. WikiEditCrunch (talk) 17:58, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

The former category has about 500 pages and the latter category has about 1k pages. --Izno (talk) 18:02, 8 September 2017 (UTC)

Which are quite a lot of pages.It would take too long to do it by hand so to speak.

Cheer. WikiEditCrunch (talk) 14:07, 9 September 2017 (UTC)

Coding... --Kanashimi (talk) 09:23, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

@WikiEditCrunch: For Talk:Financial endowment, it is OK to remove {{WikiProject Investment}}. But I find that some pages with different class or importance, for example, Talk:Prediction market. How about them? --Kanashimi (talk) 12:30, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

@Kanashimi: Yeah I would just replace those too.Worst case I will look over them later on.Thanks and Cheers! WikiEditCrunch (talk) 17:01, 12 September 2017 (UTC)

@WikiEditCrunch: OK. I will generate a report (User:Cewbot/log/20170828) for these cases. Please tell me if you have any idea of the report, and then I will continue doing the task. However, I think there may needs more discussion for these cases... --Kanashimi (talk) 08:55, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

@Kanashimi: The report looks good.Ill see if I can bring up those cases sometime soon. Thanks and Cheers! WikiEditCrunch (talk) 17:21, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

@WikiEditCrunch: Well, I have do 100 edits. Please confirm they are OK and you will check the conflicts, so I will complete the task. --Kanashimi (talk) 23:13, 13 September 2017 (UTC)

@Kanashimi: They look good (OK)! Cheers! WikiEditCrunch (talk) 16:15, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Doing... --Kanashimi (talk) 22:36, 15 September 2017 (UTC)

Y Done --Kanashimi (talk) 01:49, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

@Kanashimi: Thanks! Cheers. WikiEditCrunch (talk) 16:34, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

Save and save links Sports Reference

The site closes in the near future, it is necessary to save links in the web archive. Is it possible to collect all the links from our articles to this site on one page for the convenience of archiving? Many were included through Template: SportsReference. In general, it would be necessary to archive all the athletes' profiles from there, regardless of whether we have articles. Who has what to offer? It would be good to do this in Wikipedia in all languages. JukoFF (talk) 13:06, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

It's already archived on the Wayback Machine. At least it should be.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 16:55, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Reference suggest

Can a bot or tool be coded which has the capability to suggest references for article, or maybe statement? -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 09:59, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

• If you mean an automated process whose input is a chunk of text (article or sentence) and whose output is a list of URLs of relevance, it will be way beyond the capacities of any volunteer bot-coder, and possibly of the WMF servers computational power or storage. It would probably be feasible to feed the text to a given search engine and reformat the result to have a list of URLs but I am guessing you expected something more. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 11:30, 22 September 2017 (UTC)
• There's a whole set of {{Find sources}} type of templates which already exist, and could be a useful reply to the first half of the request (without replying to the "suggest statements" part of the request, which doesn't seem like much of a good idea either). --Francis Schonken (talk) 13:25, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

SoccerbaseBot

I am requesting a bot to change code like this:
{{cite web | title = Games played by Jack Cork in 2014/2015 | url = http://www.soccerbase.com/players/player.sd?player_id=45288&season_id=144 | publisher = Soccerbase | accessdate = 31 January 2015}}

to this:
{{soccerbase season|45288|2014|accessdate= 31 January 2015}}
which makes the job done faster than doing it manually and it does not introduces errors in later seasons when providing reference to new seasons. Iggy (talk) 12:32, 16 September 2017 (UTC)

How about {{cite news |title=Games played by Wayne Rooney in 2002/2003 |url=http://www.soccerbase.com/players/player.sd?player_id=30921&season_id=132 |publisher=Soccerbase.com |date=6 April 2011 |accessdate=6 April 2011 }} at Wayne Rooney, [http://www.soccerbase.com/players/player.sd?player_id=13501&season_id=129 "Games played by Thierry Henry in 1999–2000"] at Thierry Henry and other articles similar to these? --Kanashimi (talk) 11:06, 17 September 2017 (UTC)

It sounds algorithmically-easy enough to change all links coming from {{cite news}}, {{cite web}} and the like by matching the URL. (The only question is whether the formula to go from season year to season ID at Template:soccerbase season can really be trusted when doing the reverse conversion.) Out-of-template references are of course another matter. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 15:58, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

This may become a long term task... --Kanashimi (talk) 22:34, 18 September 2017 (UTC)

Coding... I will start from {{cite news}}, {{cite web}} and then others. --Kanashimi (talk) 10:46, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

@Struway2: Please give some advice, thank you. For example, for the case of {{cite web |title=Richard Cresswell |url=http://www.soccerbase.com/players/player.sd?player_id=8959 |work=Soccerbase |publisher=Centurycomm |accessdate=12 September 2015}} at York City F.C.. Are there a better solution? Is using Template:soccerbase or something this a good idea? (Template:Soccerbase is not in a citation format still.) --Kanashimi (talk) 13:29, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

The first I knew of this task request was when I undid your change at the template page, and was pinged to come here. Template:Soccerbase season is specifically for citing stats for individual seasons formatted as a cite web. Template:Soccerbase was designed to generate an external link to the front page of a player's details at the Soccerbase.com website. Probably if citations like the Cresswell link at York City F.C., which is citing that front page, were to be template-ised, it would be best done by adding functionality to Template:Soccerbase. Has there been any consultation at WT:FOOTBALL at all on this? I haven't seen any. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 13:53, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you. @Iggy the Swan and Tigraan: I am sorry that I do not know very much about soccer. Do we need to create a new template for the cases lack of season? --Kanashimi (talk) 13:59, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

I know nothing about soccer, and only looked at the question from a programmer's point of view: from a look at the URL and the template, it is fairly clear that the season-id/year correspondence is not so trivial, and the formula should be checked. But yeah, if this is not an uncontroversial task, you should get approval of the Wikiproject or whoever else in charge before asking for a bot. Tigraan^{Click here to contact me} 16:47, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Doing... I will only deal with these cases with season_id. --Kanashimi (talk) 11:32, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Y Done Please read the task report. --Kanashimi (talk) 05:39, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

@Kanashimi: Of those I've checked, the straightforward ones are OK. Obviously the requester didn't explain enough of the details, like what to do with the output |name= parameter, or with the exceptions (season_id=146, mostly), and I didn't realise there had been no communication: sorry about that. Mostly, you left the season_id=146 ones unchanged, which was OK, but another time, it might be worth asking rather than guessing. There's one edit I found, here, which is a bit of a mess: I've fixed it manually. Thank you for your work. cheers, Struway2 (talk) 09:50, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Thank you for your checking! Please let me know if there are still errors need to be fixed. --Kanashimi (talk) 10:01, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Struway2 posted to me about this 146 issue saying, as above on this thread, that these have been left alone - I have manually changed some of the false ID's from this:
{{cite web | title = Games played by Lee Tomlin in 2016/2017 | url = http://www.soccerbase.com/players/player.sd?player_id=41944&season_id=146 | publisher = Soccerbase | accessdate = 31 January 2015}}
to this
{{soccerbase season|41944|2016|accessdate= 31 January 2015}}

to a certain number of articles and found out there are still around 200+ articles to be done. I probably should have mentioned that at the first post on this thread,Iggy (talk) 14:25, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Authority control template

A Wikidata query informs us that there (are at the time of writing) 1,556 people with an article on English Wikipedia, and an ORCID iD in Wikidata, However, Category:Wikipedia articles with ORCID identifiers has only 1,421 embers.

This means that 135 - a considerable percentage - of the people found by the Wikidata query do not have the {{Authority control}} template at the foot of their article.

The same is no doubt true for other authority control identifiers, such as VIAF.

We need a bot, please, to add the template to those articles, and perhaps more.

If the template is added to an article, and no relevant identifier is found, it does not display - so it can safely be added to all biographical articles (if this might fall foul of COSMETICBOT, then it could be added as part of other tasks, such as general fixes done by AWB.

Can anyone kindly oblige? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:15, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Incidentally, the same applies in several other Wikipedias, for example Spanish, should anyone feel inclined to help in those also. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:40, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

A BOT ready to help.

HelpBOT responds to help citations with advice, and welcomes new editors to Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lookis (talk • contribs) 04:03, 11 September 2017 (UTC)

@Lookis: Not a good task for a bot. per context bot and see a list of frequently denied bots. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 15:56, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Category:Storyboard artists and Category:American storyboard artists redundancy

There is a great deal of redundancy between the parent Category:Storyboard artists and the child Category:American storyboard artists. Per WP:SUPERCAT "an article should be categorised as low down in the category hierarchy as possible, without duplication in parent categories above it. In other words, a page or category should rarely be placed in both a category and a subcategory or parent category (supercategory) of that category." Could someone create a bot to remove the redundancy? Thanks! Mtminchi08 (talk) 08:46, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

 Done. — JJMC89 (T·C) 21:46, 24 September 2017 (UTC)

Change the name of sub catogories of Members of the Parliament of England

The categories under Category:Members of the Parliament of England (pre-1707) by parliament were created before July 2016 when RfC on date ranges was closed. That RfC changed how the MOS:DATERANGE is specified.

Currently the names that contain a date-range are in the format ccyy–yy (unless the century is different) rather than the range style now recommended by MOS:DATERANGE ccyy–ccyy. So I am requesting a bot job to run through all the subcategories and sub-subcategories changing the name of the subcategories and sub-subcategories to ccyy–ccyy and the corresponding category names in articles that are within such categories.

For example the subcategory Category:16th-century English MPs contains a subcategory Category:English MPs 1512–14‎. To be MOS:DATERANGE compliment it ought to be renamed Category:English MPs 1512–1514‎.

-- PBS (talk) 10:42, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

• See Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2017_September_23#Redate.2Frename_all_subcategories_and_sub-subcategories_that_contain_a_date_range_per_MOS:DATERANGE -- PBS (talk) 11:09, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

Y Done — nihlus kryik  (talk) 06:53, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

BBC Genome in citations

Citations to BBC Genome should be amended thus, as the Genome is merely a front end to scans of The Radio Times. Metadata can be fetched using Citoid (or the Zotero translator for Genome, which Citoid uses). Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 09:49, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Auto notification?

I'd like to be notified by bot every time someone joins the WikiProject JavaScript. Is there a bot that can do this? The Transhumanist 06:02, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Why don't you just watchlist the membership list? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 11:28, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

A non-bot way to do that would be to move the participants into a subpage. Have that subpage in a category which you track by rss feed. Agathoclea (talk) 20:04, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

AWB to fix WP:TEMPLATECAT template

{{National Heroes of Indonesia}} currently includes a transcluded category, Category:National Heroes of Indonesia. Can someone with AWB run over the pages linked in that template to add the category and then remove the category from the template? (Besides the book link.) --Izno (talk) 21:22, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

 Done. — JJMC89 (T·C) 22:08, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

@JJMC89: Can you take care of Template:CCPLeaders as well? --Izno (talk) 14:22, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

 Done Izno. Please ignore the link error in the edit summaries. :) Nihlus 14:31, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Reducing Lint errors in Misnested tag with different rendering in HTML5 and HTML4

To reduce lint errors in Lint errors: Misnested tag with different rendering in HTML5 and HTML4, would someone be able to do a bot run that would do the following search and replaces:

• [[User:Cyberbot II|<sup style="color:green;font-family:Courier">cyberbot II]] with [[User:Cyberbot II|<sup style="color:green;font-family:Courier">cyberbot II</sup>]]
• [[User talk:Cyberbot II|<span style="color:green">Talk to my owner]] with [[User talk:Cyberbot II|<span style="color:green">Talk to my owner</span>]]

Maybe even cyberpower678 might be able to get Cyberbot II to do it? -- WOSlinker (talk) 16:50, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

I don't have time to code up a bot for that right now. If someone with AWB experience would like to do, I would be grateful. Pinging Magioladitis—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 16:52, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

There are *two* unclosed tags in the signature. One is the sup tag that User:WOSlinker has identified above. But, there is also an unclosed span tag in the talk page link in the signature. That should be closed as well. Could someone fix the bot's signature (which should be a simpler task for Cyberpower678?) besides fixing all pages that already have the old signature? SSastry (WMF) (talk) 17:36, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Note that the html5-misnesting category is a false positive (I am fixing my code that triggers this). But, it will just shift the linter issue to a lower priority category (missing-end-tag) that doesn't affect tidy replacement. This doesn't reduce the usefulness of fixing them, just lowers the urgency a bit. SSastry (WMF) (talk) 17:36, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

• The signature has long been fixed.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 17:39, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Doing... – Nihlus (talk) 17:49, 29 September 2017 (UTC)
  • Y Done – Nihlus (talk) 21:58, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

@Nihlus: Thanks. However, there still seems to be some cyberbot links to update. When I try this search here are a few records returned. -- WOSlinker (talk) 09:02, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, AWB has an issue with processing pages with certain unicode characters. I decided not to alter anything further given the response at my talk page and bot noticeboard. Ssastry agreed. Nihlus 13:16, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Can someone remove all images from this article series?

Can someone use a bot to remove all of the images from the commented-out list of articles here? Abyssal (talk) 12:59, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Hope you don't mind, I turned it into a collapsed list to save everyone having to press edit to see what was in the list. - X201 (talk) 13:03, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

@Abyssal: To clarify, you want every image removed from the articles above? Nihlus 14:35, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

@Nihlus: Yes, please! Abyssal (talk) 14:36, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

 Done Abyssal Nihlus 15:01, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, @Nihlus:! Abyssal (talk) 15:17, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

Unicode subscript/superscript bot

This is a longstanding thing that annoys me, so here's a BOTREQ for it. Unicode subscripts and superscripts#Superscripts and subscripts block contains a list of the affected characters.

The request two distinct tasks:

A) Page moves:

• Find unicode super/subscript in titles, and move it to the non-unicode version (e.g. Foo²bar, move it to Foo2bar)
• Add the appropriate displaytitle key to the new page (e.g. {{DISPLAYTITLE:Foo<sup>2</sup>bar}})

B) Page cleanup

• Find unicode super/subscript in titles, and replace them with the non-unicode version (e.g. ² → <sup>2</sup>)
• Avoid pages in Category:Unicode and Category:Typefaces, as well as their subcategories.

Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:11, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

What support in guideline/policy is there for using the non-Unicode version? --Izno (talk) 19:16, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Well we have Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Mathematics#Superscripts_and_subscripts and also Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Superscripts and subscripts (which failed because the information was elsewhere / didn't need its own page, not because it was disputed). There is also MOS:UNITSYMBOLS (down in the table). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 19:32, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

I would guess a significant portion of those articles using superscript Unicode blocks have nothing to do with mathematics, so I would be uncomfortable with this bot request for that reason (WP:CONTEXTBOT)--most of the links you've provided are specifically for styling in STEM topics. --Izno (talk) 19:58, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

A) should be problem free. For B) I'm a bit worried about WP:CONTEXTBOT as well, but from my own recollection, I can't recall any example that doesn't get filtered by avoiding the above-mentioned categories. A trial would find out if this is actually an issue. I could also do a database scan + a small manual run to see if there actually is an issue. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:27, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

My point is that moving articles not about STEM according to a STEM MOS is probably not going to fly. So no, A is not problem free. --Izno (talk) 20:40, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

This isn't a STEM standard and isn't STEM specific. It just happens that most instances will be STEM-related, so that's where the guidance is. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:09, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Mathematics#Superscripts and subscripts is STEM-topic specific and its associated page that you linked to isn't a guideline. I would object to a bot moving any page below which is unrelated to STEM, since the guidance is specifically located on a MOS for STEM topics. (I would not be against a bot/semi-automatic process nominating the page for a move via WP:Move requests.) Additionally, the categories need to go to WP:CFD regardless. I don't see any value to moving templates unless their page titles are incomprehensible (ever, not specific to this scenario). --Izno (talk) 11:13, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

MOS:UNITSYMBOLS and Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Superscripts and subscripts aren't STEM-specific, and I've shown below that this is done outside of STEM-fields as well. Cats/Templates could easily be excluded from this though. Still, probably best to had this debate on the WP:VPR to get outside eyes. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 11:19, 16 August 2017 (UTC)

A case-by-case approach might work best though. For page moved, with superscripts (filtering User/Wikipedia space), we get

I don't see any reason why any of those shouldn't render like we do with Vitamin B6, Golem100, Omega1 Scorpii, 12e Régiment blindé du Canada, Aice5, or Tommy heavenly6 discography. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 21:33, 15 August 2017 (UTC)

Oppose. This cannot be done by a bot and requires human judgement. In cases where "squared" or "cubed" is the actual meaning, these should be left as-is. Same goes for any case where changing the position changes the meaning. The superscripting should not be used when it's just some marketing stylization.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  21:06, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

It can easily be done by bot, and human judgment is involved at the list-compilation level. And when squared/cubed are meant, WP:MOSNUM says used proper superscripts/subscripts, not unicode ones. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:30, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Remove links from user talk pages to domain squatter

My shared DDNS domain was lost to a domain squatter. I would like the mass removal of links left by DPL bot on User talk pages. In short remove " (check to confirm | fix with Dab solver)" from edits like [8]. — Dispenser 17:38, 29 September 2017 (UTC)

Does User:JaGa give permission, to edit his talk page posts? He hasn't logged in since April. -- GreenC 12:48, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Him, User:R'n'B, and myself control the bot. These links are boon for the domain squatter and are worthless once they're fixed. — Dispenser 14:00, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

List of pages in namespace 0-15 that contain the string "dispenser.homenet.org":

If someone (User:Dispenser ?) could look at namespace 0 and 8-13 that would be good. I can start on a script for namespace 3. -- GreenC 15:45, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

0, 10, 12 done — JJMC89 (T·C) 16:57, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

The script is done writing for NS3. example edit. It will leave an edit summary, like for 8 changes: 8 dispenser.homenet.org URLs deleted due to domain hijacking by squatters (discussion) .. don't believe it needs bot approval since it's talk page and approved by the editor. -- GreenC 16:42, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Looks good. There's also a http:// variant. For the historical record, while Wikipedia has methods of discourging link spammming (nofollow), many of our mirrors aren't so cautious. — Dispenser 17:43, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

@GreenC: please link to the discussion with Special:Permalink, in about a week all the links in your bot's edit summaries are going to be broken and won't point to this discussion once it's been archived.

Is there no replacement URL in the meantime? Legoktm (talk) 18:56, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

1000 pages done and will wait to finished the rest for feedback. Permalink added. Dispenser didn't specify a replacement for NS3 rather removal. Some were replaced in the smaller NS's. I haven't looked at the others yet. -- GreenC 20:01, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

Comment The bot edited my User talk and pointed me to this discussion. Denying cybersquatters is a good cause so I guess the bot's actions are alright. --Lenticel ^(talk) 02:41, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Comment - I wasn't happy having content removed from my talk archives. Reverted the bot & replaced homenet.org with info.tm which fixed the problem without loss of function. Cabayi (talk) 09:10, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Also note that Dispenser's request was for User talk pages, not all namespaces. The removal of links from help pages may be particularly ummm... unhelpful. Cabayi (talk) 09:16, 3 October 2017 (UTC) Just realised, other namespaces are being done manually with replacement, not bot removal. My bad. Cabayi (talk) 09:22, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Now sure why Dispenser wanted to remove vs replace. [9] -- GreenC 15:51, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

@GreenC: The links were convenience links, useless after a month. I don't know if dispenser.info.tm will be permanent and tools.wmflabs.org has been yanked away from me too. In the end, its less and easier maintenance not having these links in the first place. — Dispenser 16:21, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Dispenser - Fine by me. I've completed the checked above including the majority of NS3 (some remaining nobots, locked pages, non-DPL posts). The rest are too random to remove by bot which were added by users themselves. It could replace with a different URL, like to tools, but it hasn't been established as a bot job, probably would need a botrequest. -- GreenC 18:20, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

Questions - What exactly happened to cause you to lose control of the domain? Is there anything preventing you from seizing it back? If so, what? Whoop whoop pull up ^{Bitching Betty | Averted crashes} 18:34, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

OfficialChartsBot

I would like to request this following task to point chart references to the correct weeks instead of pointing them to the incorrect page showing the up to date chart. For example, scope="row"{{singlechart|UK|2|artist=Calvin Harris|song=Feel So Close|date=2011-09-03}} points us to the most recent chart but changing it to scope="row"{{singlechart|UK|2|artist=Calvin Harris|song=Feel So Close|date=20110903}}, it directs us to the relevant week as to when the song made it's highest entry when it got there the first time.

Hence the bot will do this: {{singlechart|UK|peak|artist=artistname|song=name of song|date=yyyy-mm-dd}} → {{singlechart|UK|peak|artist=artistname|song=name of song|date=yyyymmdd}}, which removes the dashes in the date parameter. That way every music singles page which has this type of code will then have the correct links on citations. Also, the same problem also exists in the Scottish charts. Iggy (talk) 16:14, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

@Iggy the Swan: Couldn't the template reformat the date parameter before building it into the URL? This would save having to edit each article. -- John of Reading (talk) 20:35, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Not a good task for a bot.: @Iggy the Swan and John of Reading: It can. Within the template, you would just need to wrap {{{date}}} with {{digits}} as appropriate. It will strip anything that's not a digit for those instances. @Iggy the Swan: I can make the request for you, but exactly which links need to be formatted like this? Please provide full links. Thanks. Nihlus 01:33, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Sorry, I'm afraid I have to pass it on because I do not know how this can be solved unless someone else has a better understanding than me. Iggy (talk) 06:53, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

@Iggy the Swan: I was saying I know how to solve it, I just need to know which chart URLs use the YYYMMDD format. Nihlus 10:06, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

You mean something like this: http://www.officialcharts.com/charts/singles-chart/20131103/7501/ (UK) and http://www.officialcharts.com/charts/scottish-singles-chart/20100912/41/ (Scottish charts)? They have the format yyyymmdd which I have found. Iggy (talk) 12:35, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Template:Infobox television episode updates

Made some edits to the parameters of {{Infobox television episode}}, code in Template:Infobox television episode/sandbox, test cases in Template:Infobox television episode/testcases. Requesting a bot after no objection at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Television#Template:Infobox television episode updates. Updates to template have already been performed; current usages of the template will not be affected by this update.

• Current usage of parameter: |episode_list = [[Game of Thrones (season 7)|''Game of Thrones'' (season 7)]]<br>[[List of Game of Thrones episodes|List of ''Game of Thrones'' episodes]]
• Updated usage of parameter: |season_list = Game of Thrones (season 7) |episode_list = List of Game of Thrones episodes

A bot would just need one set of regex to make these changes.

• Find: \|\s*episode_list\s*=\s*\[\[([^\|\]]*).*<br[^>]*>\[\[([^\|\]]*).*
• Replace with: | season_list = $1\n| episode_list = $2

Cheers. -- Alex^TW 06:26, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

This should be fairly straight forward. I am just double checking the page list since the tools don't match the database. I will file a BRFA once I have it. Nihlus 06:31, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

BRFA filed. Nihlus 07:01, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

 Done AlexTheWhovian, let me know if any were missed. Nihlus 19:12, 7 October 2017 (UTC)

@Nihlus: Thank you! And will do. -- Alex^TW 01:13, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Auto listing previous CFD discussions

Per WT:CFD#Auto_listing_previous_discussions there is a desire to have previous CFDs listed at discussions for repeat nominations. A bot should be able to do this, by looking at the category talk pages, or looking through old revisions of the category pages. - Evad37 [talk] 06:39, 6 October 2017 (UTC)

Perhaps we may give a link to the AfD/CfD discussions in the talk page, so when someone want to delete a page, he/she can read previous discussions via the talk page? And it's easy to find previous discussions by the method. Even for the case of Category:Undrafted National Basketball Association players, WhatLinksHere may give a good guess. --Kanashimi (talk) 06:28, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Can anyone replace the text "Alabama" with the name of the relevant state in these drafts?

I've been drafting a series of lists of Paleozoic life by state and I used the Alabama page as a template to set them the others up. Could someone replace the text "Alabama" with the state named in the title of the following articles? Abyssal (talk) 16:51, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Doing... -- John of Reading (talk) 16:59, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading:Thanks, John! Super fast work! Abyssal (talk) 17:11, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Y Done, I hope. I used AWB to replace "Alabama" with {{subst:str right|{{subst:PAGENAME}}|30}}, and that picked the state name out of the name of each draft. You'll see I had to fix up the pages with disambiguation suffixes. -- John of Reading (talk) 17:14, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading:Hey John, could I ask you for another favor? This one's even easier. Could you remove the following templates from the same articles as before? Abyssal (talk) 18:33, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

• {{col-begin|width=100%}}
• {{col-1-of-4}}
• {{col-2-of-4}}
• {{col-3-of-4}}
• {{col-4-of-4}}
• {{col-end}}

@Abyssal:  Done -- John of Reading (talk) 19:01, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading: Hey, John. Do you think you could do what you did with the state names for the following articles I have hidden here? Abyssal (talk) 14:19, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@Abyssal:  Done -- John of Reading (talk) 14:50, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks, John. You deserve a barnstar! Abyssal (talk) 15:07, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading:Hey, John. Could you remove those same column templates from the "List of the Mesozoic life of..." articles and also remove the "==Mesozoic==" secition heading from the same? Abyssal (talk) 17:22, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@Abyssal:  Done -- John of Reading (talk) 19:08, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading:My hero! Is there anyway you can scan the Mesozoic lists for lines of code that includes the phrase "sp." and delete those entire lines? They represent species that couldn't be identified, so their presence is redundant clutter in the articles. Abyssal (talk) 19:24, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@Abyssal:  Done -- John of Reading (talk) 20:06, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading: Hey John, I have a more complicated request this time. I'm not sure if it's possible, but here goes. Could you replace "* †[[A" (and "* †[[B", "* †[[C", "* †[[D"...) in the "List of the Mesozoic life of..." articles with the following block of code (please copy it from inside the edit screen it doesn't come out formatted right here on the page itself):

==A== <!-- Please hide unwanted images in comments like this one so that they may be easily restored later if we change our minds and the image is wanted again --> [[File:PSM V53 D224 The great cretaceus ocean.jpg|thumb|right|Fossil of ''[[Animal]]''.]] [[File:PSM V53 D224 The great cretaceus ocean.jpg|thumb|right|Fossil of ''[[Animal]]''.]] [[File:PSM V53 D224 The great cretaceus ocean.jpg|thumb|right|Fossil of ''[[Animal]]''.]] [[File:PSM V53 D224 The great cretaceus ocean.jpg|thumb|right|Fossil of ''[[Animal]]''.]] [[File:PSM V53 D224 The great cretaceus ocean.jpg|thumb|right|Fossil of ''[[Animal]]''.]] [[File:PSM V53 D224 The great cretaceus ocean.jpg|thumb|right|Fossil of ''[[Animal]]''.]] [[File:PSM V53 D224 The great cretaceus ocean.jpg|thumb|right|Fossil of ''[[Animal]]''.]] [[File:PSM V53 D224 The great cretaceus ocean.jpg|thumb|right|Fossil of ''[[Animal]]''.]] [[File:PSM V53 D224 The great cretaceus ocean.jpg|thumb|right|Fossil of ''[[Animal]]''.]] [[File:PSM V53 D224 The great cretaceus ocean.jpg|thumb|right|Fossil of ''[[Animal]]''.]] [[File:Acteon tornatilis 2.png|thumb|right|A living ''[[Acteon ]]''.]] [[File:Bonefish.png|thumb|right|Illustration of a living ''[[Albula]]'', or bonefish.]] [[File:Ancilla ventricosa 001.jpg|thumb|right|Modern shell of ''[[Ancilla (gastropod)|Ancilla]]''.]] [[File:Appalachiosaurus montgomeriensis.jpg|thumb|right|Life restoration of ''[[Appalachiosaurus ]]''.]] {{Compact ToC}} * †''[[A

with the letter in the section heading and the "* †[[A" being changed once for each letter of the alphabet? Thanks. If this isn't possible I understand but setting up all the section heading in all 50 articles looks daunting. If we could automate it it would speed up the production of the articles immensely. Thanks for all the help you've given me so far. These articles are turning out great. Abyssal (talk) 16:40, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

@Abyssal: Please check what I've done to Draft:List of the Mesozoic life of Georgia (U.S. state). I've guessed that I should remove the original "List" subheading, is that right? -- John of Reading (talk) 17:45, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading:Yes. The changes made to Georgia look perfect. Thank you so much. Abyssal (talk) 17:50, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

@Abyssal: Done? -- John of Reading (talk) 18:19, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

Done. :) Abyssal (talk) 18:48, 21 September 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading: Hey, John, do you think you could do me a few more favors? Could you run that bot to remove lines of code containing "sp." from the following commented-out list of articles just like you did on September 20th? Then could you scan these articles for the phrases " – o" and " – t" and replace them with " @ o" and " @ t" before removing every "–" from the articles and then replacing the "@"s with the "–" again? Then could you run that operation from September 21st where you replaced the first instance of each capital letter in the format "* †[[A" with a block of code, but with this new smaller block of code listed below:

==A== <!-- Please hide unwanted images in comments like this one so that they may be easily restored later if we change our minds and the image is wanted again --> {{Compact ToC}} * †''[[A

Abyssal (talk) 14:51, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

@Abyssal: I've had a go at these. (1) I noticed several entries marked "spp." and one marked "p." Should those be removed? (2) I think the lists for South Carolina and Washington are too short to need A-Z subheadings. I hope that doesn't complicate the collection of the illustrations for these articles. (3) There's too much data at Draft:List of the Paleozoic life of Ohio#Z. -- John of Reading (talk) 09:02, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading:Yes, you can remove "spp." and "p.". SC and WA, can be skipped, I'll just move those lists to sections of the respective list of prehistoric life overall for each state. Any idea what went wrong with Ohio? Why does it have a whole alphabetical list under the Z section? Abyssal (talk) 01:15, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

@Abyssal: (1) Done (3) I've now checked that "Ohio" had two copies of the same data, and have removed one. I guess you just typed Ctrl-V twice by mistake. And, (4), I'll be away from tomorrow, back Thursday. :-) John of Reading (talk) 07:37, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

OK, thanks for all your help! Abyssal (talk) 11:10, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

@John of Reading: Abyssal (talk) 11:11, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Bare Twitter URL bot

Would a bot that turns bare Twitter references into formatted Template:Cite tweet citations be feasible? The four basic parameters of user, number, date, and title should be easily machine-readable, and even though a bot wouldn't be able to interpret the optional parameters, the result would still be better than a bare URL. Madg2011 (talk) 23:03, 5 August 2017 (UTC)

@Madg2011: Should be doable with the Twitter API. I'll look into it later on. Mdann52 (talk) 10:50, 4 September 2017 (UTC)

@Madg2011: Coding... --TheSandDoctor (talk) 16:27, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

@Madg2011:@Mdann52: BRFA filed --TheSandDoctor (talk) 03:28, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Move ~1700 pages per WP:JR/SR

The discussion is here: Wikipedia:AutoWikiBrowser/Tasks#Comma before Jr. and Sr., and the list of ~1678 pages is here: User:Certes/JrSr/titles. A redirect may or may not exist at the destination page for up to 103, depending on how long it takes the CSD G6 backlog to clear.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  22:43, 17 October 2017 (UTC)

BRFA filed. — JJMC89 (T·C) 05:58, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

WP:BAG has requested that it be advertised at a wider venue such as WP:VPR. I will leave the advertisement to you. — JJMC89 (T·C) 16:03, 18 October 2017 (UTC)

Y Done — JJMC89 (T·C) 00:57, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

File substitution

Please could someone substitutes the wrong File:Coccarda Italia.svg with the correct File:Coccarda Coppa Italia.svg. See here. Thanks --ArchEnzo 09:04, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

@Archenzo:  Done - 53 pages changed. Mdann52 (talk) 15:55, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Update dead links to new format

Can a bot change links from *rane.com/par-* to *aes.org/par/*?

Examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=DBFS&diff=807955578&oldid=785161053

  http://www.rane.com/par-d.html#0_dBFS →  http://www.aes.org/par/d/#0_dBFS

https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Boucherot_cell&diff=807957354&oldid=723960052

  http://www.rane.com/par-b.html#Boucherot → http://www.aes.org/par/b/#Boucherot

Not a good task for a bot. – Unless I am missing something, I only show 26 instances of this link. And because some of them are through webarchive, this should most likely be done manually. Nihlus 02:57, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Still 26 transclusions. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:18, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Incoming links to Doctors (TV series)

Per recent move request Talk:Doctors (2000 TV series)#Requested move 27 October 2017 that resulted in no consensus, could all the links to Doctors (TV series) be automatically changed to match the page article, so that there is no problem with the redirect from Doctors (TV series) to the disambiguation page? --woodensuperman 15:29, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

On it. Cheers! bd2412 T 17:56, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Done. Cheers! bd2412 T 18:08, 27 November 2017 (UTC)

Great, thanks! --woodensuperman 09:09, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Can anyone scan a list of articles and put every picture used in those articles into another article?

This is related to my previous request, but was so different that I thought I'd make a new heading for it. I'm a making a series of ~50 articles listing the prehistoric animals that once inhabited each US state. I was wondering if someone could rig a bot to search the articles linked to in the list for all the images and copy them into the article under the list heading in the format "[[File:Alethopteris PAMuseum.jpg|thumb|right|Fossil of ''[[articletitlegenusname]]''.]]". Draft:List of the Paleozoic life of Alabama is a good example of what I'm going for, I had originally tried to do this manually. Article list hidden in a comment here. Abyssal (talk) 19:40, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

I have do a little trying on Draft:List of the Paleozoic life of Alabama, but I don't know if this is what you want. Please tell me what do you feel and what can I improve the tool, thank you. --Kanashimi (talk) 08:17, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

By the way, here is the source code: 20170922.scan link targets in page.js on GitHub --Kanashimi (talk) 09:04, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for helping, I was afraid this request was going unnoticed. The trial run is kind of like what I was going for, but I noticed a few problems. The big one is that the scan included the links in the article's lead section, so it added a bunch of images of Alabama from the state's main article that didn't have anything to do with prehistoric life. I just want the pictures from the links under the main list section. Also, the scan didn't pick up the images from the taxoboxes in those articles. Also, many of the images are left aligned. Is there anyway you could tweak the code so that it only includes images from the articles in the list itself, includes images from taxoboxes, and makes sure they're all right-aligned? Abyssal (talk) 15:00, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Coding... Sure. I will try. --Kanashimi (talk) 15:30, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. Abyssal (talk) 15:48, 22 September 2017 (UTC)

@Abyssal: I have do a little more tasting. By the way, it seems the link to Archimedes is a mistake? --Kanashimi (talk) 00:59, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

@Kanashimi:Sorry I haven't been on despite your efforts to assist this project, I was working long weekend shifts. Anyway, it seems like the scan isn't picking up on all the pictures from the articles and the images aren't displayed in the same order as the articles they come from are listed. The Archimedes thing isn't a big deal. There's a common prehistoric bryozoan with that name. Maybe I'll try to disambiguate all the links to it before we do the final run. Until then we need to make sure we're picking up all the images and ordering them correctly. Abyssal (talk) 03:29, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

@Abyssal: For the images lacked, may you give some examples, so we can quickly find out what is going wrong. And for the problem of image order, I think it is because I won't add the images already existing in the article. Perhaps I should add all images whether it exists or not? --Kanashimi (talk) 08:37, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

@Kanashimi:Here's an example of an image that didn't make it into the article: File:Caninia torquia coral KGS.jpg. No need to repetitively add images, there were some images already in the article, so that may be what threw it off. Abyssal (talk) 12:40, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

@Abyssal: I find some bugs to improve and fixed them. Please check again. --Kanashimi (talk) 14:02, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

@Kanashimi: Could you try running it again? I think when you reverted you re-added some of the extraneous original images and those may have affected the results. Abyssal (talk) 14:16, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

@Abyssal:  Done --Kanashimi (talk) 14:38, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

@Kanashimi: Hmm. There's still problems with the bot not putting images in alphabetical order. It seems to be getting images from Archimedes, then Kullervo, and some taxa starting with L and then later starts going all over the place. Abyssal (talk) 14:57, 25 September 2017 (UTC)

@Abyssal: Yes, I find this problem and trying to fix it. Please tell me how about the result now, thank you. --Kanashimi (talk) 10:12, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

@Kanashimi: Big improvement, but I notice that it the scan isn't picking up on the images in the Diplichnites article. Abyssal (talk) 12:45, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

@Abyssal:  Done --Kanashimi (talk) 13:59, 26 September 2017 (UTC)

@Abyssal: If there are still somewhere needing improved, please let me know, thank you.--Kanashimi (talk) 09:56, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

Sorry I haven't been in touch. I'll get back with you tonight ~ 9:00 PM eastern. Abyssal (talk) 11:19, 30 September 2017 (UTC)

@Kanashimi: Hey, Kanashimi. Sorry to keep you waiting. I found that I actually hadn't finished all the lists in that article series and needed to spend a few days getting them ready for you. I haven't seen any actual problems with the images, so we're almost ready to go. The only change I'd ask to make is if your bot could sort the images under the headings of the first letter in the name of the article they were taken from, so the pictures from the articles starting with A go under the "A" section but before the mini table of contents, the images from articles starting with B under the B section and so on. After that we can run the whole batch. Abyssal (talk) 01:21, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

@Abyssal:  Done Please help me to fix the grammatical errors in the source code (20170922.scan link targets in page.js on GitHub), thank you. --Kanashimi (talk) 08:06, 1 October 2017 (UTC)

@Kanashimi:I'm honestly not qualified to examine code. Can we just give it a test run? Abyssal (talk) 01:27, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

@Abyssal: Thank you. My codes running on Draft:List of the Paleozoic life of Alabama. I just wonder how to fix the grammatical errors in the source code... --Kanashimi (talk) 02:13, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

@Kanashimi:Could you be more specific about what grammatical errors you're concerned about? Abyssal (talk) 02:21, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

@Abyssal: Mainly the comments and the messages in the codes. For example, are "the initial version and trial run" right? And may you tell me how about the last run of Draft:List of the Paleozoic life of Alabama? Are there still something needing to fix? --Kanashimi (talk) 03:57, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

@Kanashimi:I didn't see any errors in the code and it performed its function well on Draft:List of the Paleozoic life of Alabama. I don't see anything stopping us from running it now. :) Abyssal (talk) 15:18, 2 October 2017 (UTC)

@Kanashimi:. Abyssal (talk) 11:12, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Please let me know any time when you are ready. --Kanashimi (talk) 11:51, 8 October 2017 (UTC)

Ready when you are, Kana-chan! Abyssal (talk) 02:03, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

@Abyssal: Sorry! to make you wait so long. I am doing the task and please let me know how about the result. --Kanashimi (talk) 01:31, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

@Kanashimi: Thank you! Worked perfectly. Abyssal (talk) 02:11, 10 October 2017 (UTC)

http://199.9.2.143 -> https://www.nrlmry.navy.mil

Hi,

In enwiki, 189 webpages have an old external link to the website http://199.9.2.143. source: Special:LinkSearch search

The issue, with a example: The link http://199.9.2.143/tcdat/tc10/ATL/12L.JULIA/trackfile.txt have a server redirect to HTTPS protocol but fail.

Please, replace http://199.9.2.143/ by https://www.nrlmry.navy.mil/ with a bot. --Manu1400 (talk) 06:19, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Can anyone whose browser doesn't block this website as an attack page please verify that the request does indeed lead to the correct page? Primefac (talk) 21:44, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, they go to the same place. Nihlus 21:45, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

 Done. Primefac (talk) 21:59, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Bulk find-and-replace request

Can anyone use a bot to find instances of the following text and replace remove the crosses in the following articles commented out in the section code? Abyssal (talk) 23:59, 6 December 2017 (UTC)

Huge list moved to Wikipedia:Bot requests/20171206Request. Primefac (talk) 01:22, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

 Done. Primefac (talk) 01:33, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks @Primefac:. I've updated the page you made with a second procedure. Could you run that one, too? Abyssal (talk) 14:02, 7 December 2017 (UTC)

 Done. Primefac (talk) 21:43, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

Replace User:Acebot

Acebot has not edited since 25 September, and Ace111 has not fixed the bot. It needs to be replaced or fixed as soon as possible, since {{NUMBEROF/data}} is used in a number of Wikipedia articles and has not been updated manually. Jc86035 (talk) 07:55, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

I have fixed the bot, sorry for a long delay in doing this. The bot runs now. — Ace111 (talk) 17:03, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Linefeed "hunter-killer"

It's been argued that linefeed (LF) characters in the wiki source "create many ... issues" including "both rendering [and] accessibility issues" (Help talk:Citation Style 1#Pointless whitespace error). Someone's set up the citation templates to throw red error messages that try to force editors to find and remove LFs in the template input. This is extremely undesirable, an abuse of the citation templates to try to arm-twist people into doing technical work they're often not competent to do (the average editor doesn't even know what a linefeed is), and interfering with a basic all-editors responsibility to cite sources.

This is obviously bot work, and since it's fixing legit accessibility and rendering problems, it's not WP:COSMETICBOT. I would suggest

1. A one-time job to hunt down the extant cases, and replace them with carriage returns (CR) if alone, or strip them from a CR/LF pair.
2. A daily (or hourly, or weekly, or whatever) maintenance job to find new cases and do the same.

Frankly, it's weird that MediaWiki doesn't already deal with this as part of its routine parsing upon page save.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  21:26, 3 October 2017 (UTC)

SMcCandlish is wrong that flagging the errors in CS1 templates is undesirable, but he's right that bots can be leveraged here. Citation parameters should all be free of linefeeds. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:34, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

That borders on a straw man; I did not suggest that flagging errors in CS1 templates is undesirable. I said that flagging this particular cleanup task in a CS1 template is. See also proof by assertion. I've given policy and common-sense-based reasons why doing that is wrong, and all you've got is "nuh-uh, no it's not". This isn't a playground. And I'm trying to get you what want in a much more effective way than trying to press-gang people into trivial geeky gnoming when they're trying to do actual encyclopedia work.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ >^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ<  14:19, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Why are CR desirable when LF are apparently not? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:11, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Frankly, this proposal makes no sense whatsoever. The LF character is added to the wikitext whenever you hit ↵ Enter. It's not invisible except in the way space is invisible and it doesn't cause problems. The suggestion to replace it with CR is literally impossible, since MediaWiki converts CRLF sequences and lone CR characters into LF when saving.

There might be some sense to a more specific proposal to remove newlines from certain contexts (e.g. certain parameters in certain templates). But that would need a clear proposal as to which contexts those are, as well as sufficient analysis to establish that it's not WP:CONTEXTBOT. Anomie⚔ 16:12, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Here's an example of where this causes an issue

• Smith, J. (1999). "The way things are". {{cite journal}}: |access-date= requires |url= (help); Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

I'll admit, I was under the impression that

• Smith, J. (1999). "The way things are". Retrieved 2012-09-23. {{cite journal}}: Cite journal requires |journal= (help)

would equally be broken, but apparently those are not. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 18:03, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

I wonder if this will be the same with the new parsing model. Anyway the bug as demonstrated above is eminently bottable. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:30, 11 October 2017 (UTC).

Portal: Current Event origin bot is not working

Moved to Wikipedia:Bots/Noticeboard § Portal: Current Event origin bot is not working

 – Nihlus 00:56, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

Remove double colons from subpages of Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team

A vast majority of the lint errors for double-leading-colons in links (which are no longer rendered as correct links) are from bot-created pages that are subpages of Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team. I wanted to propose a bot that would fix these errors to unclog the lint error list so we can identify other sources of such errors. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:32, 9 October 2017 (UTC)

Actually there are comparatively few pages, at least on the first few pages of the list, they are merely repeated. I have fixed a bunch of them, will revisit. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 21:46, 10 October 2017 (UTC).

 Done All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 09:59, 11 October 2017 (UTC).

Thanks. As a side note, the WP 1.0 errors seem to stem from the bot predating the creation of the Draft namespace, so it doesn't know what to call it. As a result, an article that was supposed to be :Draft:Example ends up as ::Example instead. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:43, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

To me, it looks like the vast majority of the errors (at least in the first few pages) are in talk page signatures of "::User:RHaworth", which could probably be fixed by a bot or a patient AWB editor. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:00, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

They are, and I am fixing them - they are mostly templated warnings to long-gone editors. There are a few other sigs that are similar, and are easy fixes. Most of the rest is also easy fixes. Interestingly the number has been going up as well as down, so it might be useful to get this category cleared. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 14:12, 11 October 2017 (UTC).

The category is likely growing as more and more old pages are reparsed. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 14:39, 11 October 2017 (UTC)

Most of this is  Done - will be interesting to see if the numbers creep up. I will try to work through the remaining pages, excluding user talk pages, where people are getting unhappy, mostly on the behalf of others. All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 00:18, 12 October 2017 (UTC).

Nice work. It looks like we are back to needing someone to run an approved bot to clean up the rest of them. Any takers? – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:33, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

I cleaned up the rest of the Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team log errors semi-manually with AWB, but WP 1.0 bot has not been updated to recognize the Draft namespace (none of the maintainers are still active on Wikipedia) so a bot is likely needed to catch and fix new errors as they occur. --Ahecht (TALK
PAGE) 15:18, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

I can have my bot clean up the rest once it is done with its current task. Nihlus 15:52, 12 October 2017 (UTC)

BRFA filed. Nihlus 15:43, 13 October 2017 (UTC)

List of most thanked Wikipedians

We have lots of lists of Wikipedians, accounts who have made the most edits, created the most new articles, deleted the most pages and handed out the most blocks. Why not have a list of Wikipedians who have received the most thanks? ϢereSpielChequers 13:24, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

If this is done, the actual number should remain private. It might list the top 10 in no particular order with no numbers. Otherwise it creates a score system which will become gamed and loose its innocence and appeal, becoming a little grasping. "I'll help you, BTW a thank you is always appreciated". Top score thank you barnstars follow. Ugh. Leave me out. -- GreenC 14:19, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

OK so an opt out system would be needed as applies at WP:EDITS. Could we use the same opt out list or would this need a new one? ϢereSpielChequers 16:53, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Could be framed like WP:100, WP:200, WP:300... Great, you made the list of editors thanked 100 or more times! Where you rank within that list is not so important. Actually asking someone to thank you might be frowned upon, especially if such requests were frequently made by the same editor. – wbm1058 (talk) 17:11, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

A variant could be how many people have now thanked you "congratulations you have now been thanked by 20 different fellow Wikipedians" ϢereSpielChequers 06:56, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

• Technical info: Data provided via mw:Extension:Thanks. You could even write a bot that sent thanks for edits meeting specified criteria via the API for sending thanks. Queried via mw:API:Logevents. – wbm1058 (talk) 16:57, 4 October 2017 (UTC)

Every scriptkiddy with 10 minutes of spare time could write a script that ensures his account ends up at #1. Bad idea. (((The Quixotic Potato))) (talk) 18:00, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

You all may find this of use: User:Faebot/thanks CKoerner (WMF) (talk) 20:30, 5 October 2017 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Database reports/Thanks usage --Edgars2007 (talk/contribs) 17:12, 19 October 2017 (UTC)

Convert amp pages to full pages

If someone is editing on mobile, there's a chance the link they wish to cite will be an amp page. Requesting a bot to identify these pages and convert them to the full version. Example: amp full.Terrorist96 (talk) 18:29, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

@Terrorist96: I was going to see how to do this at the very least, however, so far I have been unable to find out how to get the references through the API and the only way I have found is disabled (this for anyone interested). I will keep looking as this has piqued my interest. --TheSandDoctor (talk) 04:06, 22 October 2017 (UTC)

I appear to have found a different way to do it that has worked in private tests (on own installation of MediaWiki), however, do you have a ballpark figure as to how many pages this would potentially affect Terrorist96? --TheSandDoctor (talk) 15:37, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

@TheSandDoctor: Probably somewhere in the mid tens to low hundreds. Something to make it more difficult though is that different sites have different URL syntax for the amp pages. Do a Google search on your mobile and click any results you see that have a lightning bolt next to them to see. Thanks!Terrorist96 (talk) 15:45, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

That was something that I initially had an issue with, however, I was able to resolve by just removing the first part of the URL for example, with https://www.google.ca /amp/s/www.theverge.com/platform/amp/2017/9/19/16333344/apple-ios-11-iphone-ipad-download-available-now, I was able to get it to work by simply removing the www.google.ca/amp/s/ part as most of the sites I have tested with (aside from The Verge) do not contain the "/platform/amp" bit (in the case of The Verge, once the google.ca/amp/s/ bit is removed, the website cleans itself up on mobile once you click the link).

A bot like this would have to cycle through all of the articles in Wikipedia however, wouldn't it Terrorist96? (Bot would be looking for "google.XX(.XX)" followed by "/amp/s/", and only editing when it found it). --TheSandDoctor (talk) 16:26, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

I forgot about URLs that begin with google.xx. If you open an amp search result on mobile in a new tab, it won't have the google.xx prefix. Compare: https://www.google DOT com/amp/www.foxnews.com/food-drink/2017/10/23/chipotle-is-giving-away-free-burritos-for-year.amp.html and http://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/2017/10/23/chipotle-is-giving-away-free-burritos-for-year.amp.html. Going to either of these links on mobile will work and will remain as the amp page. Going to the first URLs using a desktop/laptop will redirect to the full version but the second version will remain as amp. More examples of the variations: https://www.topgear.com/car-news/supercars/mclaren-mso-r-two-supercar-special?amp https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/early-lead/wp/2017/10/23/kyrie-irvings-25000-fine-for-insulting-a-heckler-hurts-worse-he-gave-away-his-tell/ (have to remove the entire "amphtml/" from the URL to convert it). And there are a lot more.

Also, when I tried saving my post, I got this warning about the google.com/amp url (so it seems that Wiki already prevents you from posting a google.com/amp/ link, which is why I modified it above):

Your edit was not saved because it contains a new external link to a site registered on Wikipedia's blacklist. To save your changes now, you must go back and remove the blocked link (shown below), and then save. Note that if you used a redirection link or URL shortener (like e.g. goo.gl, t.co, youtu.be, bit.ly), you may still be able to save your changes by using the direct, non-shortened link - you generally obtain the non-shortened link by following the link, and copying the contents of the address bar of your web-browser after the page has loaded. Links containing google.com/url? are resulting from a copy/paste from the result page of a Google search - please follow the link on the result page, and copy/paste the contents of the address bar of your web-browser after the page has loaded, or click here to convert the link. If you feel the link is needed, you can: Request that the entire website be allowed, that is, removed from the local or global spam blacklists (check both lists to see which one is affecting you). Request that just the specific page be allowed, without unblocking the whole website, by asking on the spam whitelist talk page. Blacklisting indicates past problems with the link, so any requests should clearly demonstrate how inclusion would benefit Wikipedia.

The following link has triggered a protection filter:google.com/amp/  Either that exact link, or a portion of it (typically the root domain name) is currently blocked. Solutions:

• If the url used is a url shortener/redirect, please use the full url in its place, for example, use youtube.com rather than youtu.be,
• If the url is a google url, please look to use the (full) original source, not the google shortcut or its alternative.
• Look to find an alternative url that is considered authoritative.

Terrorist96 (talk) 18:36, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

Migrate from deprecated WikiProject Caribbean country task forces

Reposting...
Four of the task forces for WikiProject Caribbean have graduated to full-fledged WikiProjects with their own banner templates, and the task force parameters have been deprecated: {{WikiProject Cuba}}, {{WikiProject Grenada}}, {{WikiProject Haiti}}, and {{WikiProject Trinidad and Tobago}}. We need a bot to go through the existing transclusions of {{WikiProject Caribbean}} and perform the following changes:

• If none of the four task forces above are assigned, leave the {{WikiProject Caribbean}} template as it is.
• If any of the four task forces above are assigned, remove the relevant task force parameters and add the relevant WikiProject banners. If there are no other task force parameters remaining after 1 or more have been migrated, remove the {{WikiProject Caribbean}} template.

Please also migrate the task-force importance parameters if they exist, for example |cuba-importance=. If there isn't a task-force importance parameter, just leave the importance blank. The |class=, |category=, |listas=, and |small= parameters should be copied from {{WikiProject Caribbean}} template if they exist. Kaldari (talk) 20:39, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

You start off with "reposting", so please provide links to the previous discussions. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:25, 24 October 2017 (UTC)

@Kaldari: --TheSandDoctor (talk) 03:29, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

@Redrose64: There was nothing substantive discussed in the previous posting. Kaldari (talk) 07:24, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Userscripts, and the future of outlines

Since this pertains to (semi) automation, I thought you might like a heads up about what I've been working on...

I'm in the process of building scripts for viewing outlines and for outline development. So that other programmers can follow along with how the source code works, I've provided extensive notes on the scripts' talk pages.

So far, there is:

• User:The Transhumanist/OutlineViewAnnotationToggler.js – this one provides a menu item to turn annotations on/off, so you can view lists bare when you want to (without annotations). When done, it will work on (the embedded lists of) all pages, not just outlines. Currently it is limited to outlines only, for development and testing purposes. It supports hotkey activation/deactivation of annotations, but that feature currently lacks an accurate viewport location reset for retaining the location on screen that the user was looking at. The program also needs an indicator that tells the user it is still on. Otherwise, you might wonder why a bare list has annotations in edit mode, when you go in to add some. :) Though it is functional as is. Check it out. After installing it, look at Outline of cell biology, and press ⇧ Shift+Alt+a. And again.
• User:The Transhumanist/RedlinksRemover.js – strips out entries in outlines that are nothing but a redlink. It removes them right out of the tree structure. But only end nodes (i.e., not parent nodes, which we need to keep). It delinks redlinks that have non-redlink offspring, or that have or are embedded in an annotation. It does not yet recognize entries that lack a bullet (it treats those as embedded). And of course, saving must be done manually by the user.

It is my objective to build a set of scripts that fully automate the process of creating outlines. This end goal is a long way off (AI-complete?). In the meantime, I hope to increase editor productivity as much as I can. Fifty percent automation would double an editor's productivity. I think I could reach 80% automation (a five-fold increase in productivity) within a couple years. Comments and suggestions are welcome.

There's more:

• User:The Transhumanist/StripSearchInWikicode.js – another script, which strips WP search results down to a bare list of links, and inserts wikilink formatting for ease of insertion of those links into lists. This is useful for gathering links for outlines. I'd like this script to sort its results. So, if you know how, or know someone who knows how, please let me know. A more immediate problem is that the output is interlaced with CR/LFs. I can't figure out how to get rid of them. Stripping them out in WikEd via regex is a tedious extra step. It would be nice to track them down and remove them with the script.

I look forward to your observations, concerns, ideas, and advice. The Transhumanist 08:25, 26 October 2017 (UTC)

Infobox image cleanup

Is it possible to add such cleanup tasks to one f the existing bots or create a bot for such cleanups? These fill up the maintenance cat of unknown parameters unnecessarily. Even GA level articles has such issues. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 13:39, 14 September 2017 (UTC)

Is it just for {{Infobox religious building}} or others as well Capankajsmilyo? --TheSandDoctor (talk) 18:18, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Lots of infobox has the same issue, especially those on the pages of less popular old articles. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 18:31, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

Coding... I've been looking at this for a bit; I just got distracted. I'm close to finishing the code for instances where it ends in |300px. We might need to revisit the full image syntax in the infobox once we determine which ones don't require it, or at least convert all of them to not require it. Nihlus 21:32, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

BRFA filed – Nihlus 22:44, 27 October 2017 (UTC)

If you look in Category:Unknown parameters, you will see a number of "pages using infobox XXX with unsupported parameters" categories. Many of them will have some form of |image=File:Blah.jpg|thumb|250px in their articles. A bot that scrubbed these categories for those straightforward errors would be helpful. – Jonesey95 (talk) 01:53, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Request to replace pushpin_map with map_type

This is a huge task and seem nearly impossible to do manually. This will enable in effective template maintenance and easier consolidation. I have been trying to cleanup Category:Pages using infobox Hindu temple with unknown parameters since quite some time and the task seems never ending process. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 17:52, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

It looks like there are about 500 (up to no more than 900) affected pages in the category. Someone with AWB access may be able to get this done pretty quickly. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:18, 19 September 2017 (UTC)

Its not merely about the cat I referred to. There's a wider intiative going on at Wikipedia:Maps in infoboxes, one of whose objective is what I have stated above. You yourself are a part of it. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 04:08, 20 September 2017 (UTC)

@Capankajsmilyo: Can you tell me explicitly what you need changed and on what templates? Do you just need to replace pushpin_map with map_type on every instance of {{Infobox Hindu temple}}? Is there more? — nihlus kryik  (talk) 21:28, 23 September 2017 (UTC)

The discussion has started in Wikipedia:Maps in infoboxes. But replacing |pushpin_map= with |map_type= across all the Infoboxes can be a good start. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 03:11, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Broken links to academia.edu

I recently found over 100 broken links to academia.edu, but most of them haven't been repaired yet. Would it possible to automatically repair these links, or at least automatically tag them with the {{dead link}} tag? Jarble (talk) 02:18, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

@Jarble: You have to have access in order to see those. I've confirmed that those links are not dead. Nihlus 02:30, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

@Nihlus: Surprisingly, I've been able to access these links from Google Scholar but not from Wikipedia. In my browser, these documents show a "Page Not Found" error message when they are linked from Wikipedia instead of Google Scholar. Jarble (talk) 02:34, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

@Jarble: Are you able to try in "Incognito" or with add-ons disabled? (pretty sure FF still uses add-ons in InPrivate Browsing). It may be that one of your add-ons is affecting it - I don't seem to have an issue accessing these (although I am logged into academia.edu). Cheers. Jon Kolbert (talk) 02:40, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

@Jon Kolbert: Switching to incognito mode doesn't solve this problem, and these pages will only display a "Page Not Found" message for users who are not logged in to academia.edu. I hope we can find a more reliable replacement for these links. Jarble (talk) 03:05, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

While not preferable, paywalled/restricted-access links are permitted. Jon Kolbert (talk) 03:55, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

CS1 deprecated parameters

Would it be possible/appropriate for a bot to run across the articles in Category:CS1 errors: deprecated parameters, replacing the deprecated parameters with their non-deprecated counterparts? I think this should be quite easy for a bot to do (it's 5 x 1-for-1 substitutions) and would remove the (imo unsightly) "Cite uses deprecated parameter" error messages from about 10,000 articles. DH85868993 (talk) 03:25, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Note that the category is still populating (and may continue to do so for months; see T132467), and that a bot might want to run on a page list based on output from searches instead. – Jonesey95 (talk) 04:56, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

@DH85868993 and Jonesey95: I can probably handle this. I don't deal with citation templates too often, so what templates use these? Nihlus 05:03, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

@Nihlus: Pending a better answer from someone who actually knows, my guess would be that the templates in Category:Citation Style 1 templates (and its subcategories?) potentially use these parameters. DH85868993 (talk) 05:14, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

The bot should run on all of the templates in that category (but not subcategories). The list of templates should match the list at Help:Citation Style 1#General use. See User:Jonesey95/AutoEd/unnamed.js for regex code that should be helpful, though for a bot, you will want to be more explicit with the template calls so that you don't try to modify outliers like {{cite court}}. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:02, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

BRFA filed Nihlus 21:35, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

@Nihlus: Thanks. DH85868993 (talk) 06:40, 10 November 2017 (UTC)

BTW, I believe AWB with genfixes on will take care of those. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 00:37, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

• One example is "|religion=" being removed from {{Infobox officeholder}} and its many implementations in June 2017.--Georgia Army Vet Contribs Talk 04:53, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Infobox settlement - Infobox City - replacements, inserts and other fixes

900 articles transclude Template:Infobox City which is a redirect to Template:Infobox settlement [10].

They have been created on three days, between 6 and 9 September 2007, and seem all to be about municipalities of Spain.

The pipe symbols are placed at the end of each line, against current practice. A type parameter is missing. Sometimes the official name includes ", Spain". On some pages coordinates are present at the bottom of the page, which could go into the infobox. A hint to the Template:Infobox_settlement documentation is not present.

Example diff (3 edits) to fix:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Higuera_de_Llerena&type=revision&diff=809276467&oldid=808052640

Would be nice if a bot could at least fix some of this. 77.179.11.240 (talk) 03:56, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

I support this task. -- Magioladitis (talk) 21:16, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Unless you're actually suggesting a change in content, this falls squarely in the COSMETICBOT territory, because the end result is completely unchanged. Primefac (talk) 21:33, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Primefac Read carefully. "type parameter is missing. Sometimes the official name includes ", Spain" etc etc. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:10, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Type parameter is optional, would fall under CONTEXTBOT anyway (since they are not all guaranteed to be cities), and does including "Spain" in the name matter? The latter is a genuine question, because I did indeed miss that part of the request, and am curious whether it's worth writing up a bot to literally remove ", Spain" from a few hundred pages. Primefac (talk) 22:43, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

The requestor is locally and globally banned Tobias Conradi. Please evaluate properly before proceeding. —SpacemanSpiff 07:21, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Bulk find-and-replace request

Can anyone find instances of the following commented out text in the following articles and replace them with their equivalents from the final list? Abyssal (talk) 03:44, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

 Done. List is at /20171217Request. Primefac (talk) 16:21, 17 December 2017 (UTC)

Request for Kanashimi to run cewbot on some articles.

@Kanashimi:A few months ago I asked you to use your cewbot to scan a list of articles for links to other articles and sort all of the images in the linked articles under the alphabetical headings of the original articles. Could you perform this same operation for the new list of articles I've commented out below? I'd have posted this to your article page but I can't read Chinese. Thanks for all the help you've provided so far. Abyssal (talk) 15:43, 18 December 2017 (UTC)

 Done --Kanashimi (talk) 08:35, 19 December 2017 (UTC)

Can all the articles in this category be moved to draft space?

Category:Lists of taxa by U.S. state of type locality Abyssal (talk) 17:04, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

 Done — JJMC89 (T·C) 06:19, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Archive bot

Hi, I'm an admin in Azerbaijani Wikipedia and I've been referred to coders. We were just wondering is it possible to create archivebot and patrol system for Az.Wikipedia? --Azerifactory (talk) 23:55, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

Azerifactory, the contact is User:Cyberpower678. -- GreenC 13:19, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Converting improperly written out references to Cite web template

New task for NihlusBOT: to convert something like
"[http://www.fifadata.com/document/FWWC/2015/pdf/FWWC_2015_SquadLists.pdf 2015 World Cup] fifadata.com. 2 December 2015. Retrieved 2 December 2017" to
"{{Cite web|url=http://www.fifadata.com/document/FWWC/2015/pdf/FWWC_2015_SquadLists.pdf|title=2015 World Cup|publisher=fifadata.com|date=2 July 2015|accessdate=2 December 2017}}"
where in the square brackets, the space after the url is the title, the first date represents the date parameter and the latter date after 'Retrieved' represents the accessdate. Iggy (talk) 19:06, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Also need to mention that these are only found in ref tags, as some of them are found in External Links section. Only the ones in ref tags should be altered by the bot. Iggy (talk) 19:14, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

This seems to go against WP:CITEVAR - there is no requirement for articles to use citation templates, and articles that don't use templates should not be unilaterally converted to use them. — Carl (CBM · talk) 19:26, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

What CBM said. CITEVAR obsessives will shout this one down, even if it improves verifiability. – Jonesey95 (talk) 20:00, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

Needs wider discussion. before attempting. Nihlus 20:13, 2 December 2017 (UTC)

De-linting old signatures

Moved to WT:Linter#De-linting old signatures. --Izno (talk) 14:01, 28 November 2017 (UTC)

Bot to identify and list currently online administrators

It is currently somewhat awkward to contact an administrator on Wikipedia for any time-sensitive tasks (e.g. revdeling something). The current best way to find an administrator who is online now is through IRC, which is a lot of hoops at times. Therefore why don't we create a bot that:

1) Looks at Special:RecentChanges or another source to provide a list of admins who are actively editing.

2) Posts the 3ish admins who are most likely to be active right now on some new wikipedia page.

3) Continually loops through the two above steps every couple of minutes to keep the resource useful.

This also has the side-effect of providing a way to contact a neutral 3rd party admin in a dispute.

I don't think this is terribly hard to code, but I could be very wrong. I don't think that we need anything sophisticated for "most likely to be active" - it's useful with something as blunt as ranking admins by most recent edit/logged action. The only tricky point in my mind is that it is a bot that has to be running 24/7 with a high reliability, because we might be linking to it's page from places like WP:Emergency, where one of the steps is contacting an admin.

Is this a practical useful bot that should be created? Tazerdadog (talk) 08:24, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

To find a recently active admin, use the logs of admin activity: Special:Log/block or Special:Log/delete or Special:Log/protect. The block log is generally all that is required, but there is a tool with an "admins only" option: https://tools.wmflabs.org/apersonbot/recently-active/ Johnuniq (talk) 08:47, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

• It would also be very useful for vandals who after seeing that list of active admins; could pick a time when all or most the admins are asleep, to then go on a rampage and engage in mass template vandalism. None of the other logs that log admins are accurate enough to see if they aren’t there, just if they are using the tools. Dysklyver 09:22, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

  The idea is to post only the most recently active 3ish admins. That way, you can find an active admin, but a vandal doesn't get stats. Tazerdadog (talk) 12:04, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

  That's reasonable, we ought to always have 3 admins online at any given time. I just don't want this being used against us. Dysklyver 12:42, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

• This doesn't seem like the best use of a bot. What edit rate do you expect? Once a second? Once a minute? After what time does "three admins" become stale data? --Izno (talk) 13:37, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

  Once every 5 minutes would be my initial proposal for edit rate. If you can implement this without a bot, I'm all ears. Tazerdadog (talk) 15:14, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

• I'm with John on this one - there are many ways of figuring out who is currently active without creating a specific page for it. Not to say that this is a bad idea, of course (I like it), but it would definitely be resource-intensive compared to what's already in existence. Primefac (talk) 14:23, 13 November 2017 (UTC)
• I patched the tool above to add a "group" option, so now you can go directly to the admins view: https://tools.wmflabs.org/apersonbot/recently-active/?admins Enterprisey (talk!) 01:36, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

  Nice job enterprisey. Only issue is that your radio buttons don't work if you use that link. You have to go to https://tools.wmflabs.org/apersonbot/recently-active/ for them to work properly. Primefac (talk) 14:40, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

  Thanks for pointing that out - fixed! Enterprisey (talk!) 05:54, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

• There used to be some bots that would continuously update the online status of a user, much as is being proposed here. Those bots were halted because they used too many resources. Anomie⚔ 18:51, 14 November 2017 (UTC)
• I'm not an admin but wouldn't want to be #1 on the list. Like pressing '0' in a voicemail system to speak to a live person immediately. Not to say there isn't a need for such a thing but would require more compensation than do-goodery. BTW maybe this can be proposed in the currently running Community Wishlist Survey - a live help-desk funded by the Foundation. -- GreenC 19:23, 14 November 2017 (UTC)

Archiving six websites

On behalf of Wikipedia:WikiProject New York City, I would like to place a request for a bot to archive all article-space urls for DNAinfo and the Gothamist network. These sites have all suddenly shut down with all of their articles redirecting to the shutdown notice, leaving thousands of dead links across the entire wiki. Here is a list of links:

• Gothamist (1,451 results)
• DNAinfo (744 results)
• LAist (655 results)
• Chicagoist (450 results)
• DCist (403 results)
• SFist (288 results)

Basically, a bot should either replace the existing external links with web.archive.org citations or something similar, or archive the citation like InternetArchiveBot already does. I can't do it with Archive Bot because it these pages are all redirect pages (301 errors) and technically not 404 errors. epicgenius (talk) 00:46, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

This is what InternetArchiveBot is meant to do.—CYBERPOWER (Around) 01:41, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678: Can you list the entire domains as dead? I get a permission error when I try to on the interface. Or does IABot handle the 301s just like dead links? Nihlus 03:00, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Nope. They need to be adjusted on the interface. Mass altering URLs by domain is usually restricted sysops.—CYBERPOWER (Around) 03:04, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

So this all needs to be done by hand? Yikes. Nihlus 03:11, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

I said the domains need to be adjusted since 301 are considered alive.—CYBERPOWER (Around) 03:24, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

I guess I don't understand. I was implying that MangeURLDomain should be used to fix it, but I get a permission error. So someone with permission on the interface needs to use it in order to correct it. Nihlus 03:27, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

1. Gothamist—>https://tools.wmflabs.org/iabot/index.php?page=viewjob&id=923
2. DNAinfo->https://tools.wmflabs.org/iabot/index.php?page=viewjob&id=924
3. LAist->https://tools.wmflabs.org/iabot/index.php?page=viewjob&id=925
4. Chicagoist->https://tools.wmflabs.org/iabot/index.php?page=viewjob&id=926
5. DCist->https://tools.wmflabs.org/iabot/index.php?page=viewjob&id=927
6. SFist->https://tools.wmflabs.org/iabot/index.php?page=viewjob&id=929 —CYBERPOWER (Around) 03:42, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678 and Nihlus: Thanks for the help. I didn't know IABot could actually archive entire domains. epicgenius (talk) 13:35, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

While we're at it, could someone run it on this domain http://scholarlyoa.com/? (Searches: [11] [12]) Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 20:32, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

@Headbomb: Are you sure it's actually dead and not just temporarily out?—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 14:20, 5 November 2017 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678: 100% sure. Jeffrey Beal took down his stuff a few months ago because he was tired of dealing with complaints about it.Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 09:59, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

@Headbomb:  Done—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 15:45, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678: many thanks. Is there a job log for that one? Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:48, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

See https://tools.wmflabs.org/iabot/index.php?page=viewjob&id=946. Also see my comment on the bottom of this thread.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 15:52, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

1. Shanghaiist—>https://tools.wmflabs.org/iabot/index.php?page=viewjob&id=947
2. Torontoist—>https://tools.wmflabs.org/iabot/index.php?page=viewjob&id=948 Geo Swan (talk) 14:24, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
3. Bostonist—>https://tools.wmflabs.org/iabot/index.php?page=viewjob&id=949 Geo Swan (talk) 00:49, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

   @Geo Swan: I'm not sure what you did here, but those domains haven't been blacklisted. The bot isn't going to do anything here.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 15:38, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

• Something's not right. The content of all domains appear to be back.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 15:45, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

If this is a reference to scholarlyoa, everything is down for me [e.g. [13]]. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:58, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

@Headbomb: CP678 is referring the ones that the request was originally made for. Also, it might be worth to keep them archived since they're dying. Dat Guy^Talk_Contribs 16:01, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

That's what I thought initially, but he told me to look at the comment at the bottom of the thread soo.... Anyway, AFAIC, I got what I wanted out of IABot. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:19, 7 November 2017 (UTC)

• @Epicgenius: The sites appear to be up again.—CYBERPOWER (Chat) 22:03, 7 November 2017 (UTC)
  • @Cyberpower678: Thanks. I noticed that the pages were restored the day after the bot ran through all the articles. I'm not sure what should be done here, though, besides setting all of the |dead-url= statuses to "no". epicgenius (talk) 02:12, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

    Interesting that there's a notice at the top saying the site is closed, yet it still lives. Maybe it's just so people can have a chance to get what they need from it.—CYBERPOWER (Around) 02:31, 8 November 2017 (UTC)

Semi-protect the 3000 most-transcluded {{Taxonomy/}} templates

WP:TREE requests that most of the transclusions of the {{Taxonomy/}} family of templates be WP:SEMI protected. The entire family contains ~33,700 templates, but the top 3000 templates (~9%), by transclusion count, account for ~96.6% of all transclusions. These templates are hierarchical, so they have a greater potential for disruption than their transclusion count may suggest. For example, 588 transclusions of {{Taxonomy/Planulozoa}} were generated by a malicious and/or unknowledgeable editor, and then summarily removed by Peter coxhead, with only a few edits by both parties. Since there are so many templates, monitoring all of them is not feasible, so some basic level of protection is desired and here requested. Furthermore, changes to these templates are infrequent and almost exclusively performed by experienced editors, so WP:SEMI seems minimally appropriate for the top 3,000, if not all of these templates.

The resulting list of 2734 permission-free templates is here.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:30, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Tom.Reding, convert the pages into wikilinks and I'll p-batch the whole lot. Primefac (talk) 22:46, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Done! How would you feel about doing more?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  23:05, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

 Done. I think I skipped a dozen or so due to API errors, but just let me know and I'll double back. If something needs protecting in the future, feel free to drop me a note. Primefac (talk) 23:56, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

This should be undone. No notice of this proposal was made to the botanists at WP:PLANTS. Our membership does not have template rights and was due to begin a massive overhaul of bryophyte and pteridophyte taxonomy, affecting hundreds of templates. --EncycloPetey (talk) 23:59, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

EncycloPetey, the note you left me on my talk page was plenty sufficient. As I stated there, I misread the request. I am currently dropping them to semi protection. Primefac (talk) 00:01, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Thanks for the speedy response. The WP:PLANTS initiative will probably involve the creation of new Taxonomy templates. Will there be a centralized means of noting these for similar protection as they are created? Or will someone volunteer to check once a month (or every other) to ensure those are protected as well? --EncycloPetey (talk) 00:13, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Primefac, thank you. I'll message you about the others after I've isolated those with a lack of protection status.

EncycloPetey, once you and/or WP:PLANTS' {{Taxonomy/}}-expansion efforts are complete, I'm sure that you can post a list of all of the new subtemplates here at BOTREQ, referencing this request, and it will be taken care of. If not, you can ping anyone mentioned in this thread to help get the ball rolling. If you want/need, ping me, regardless, at that time, and I'll do a database scan to make sure no {{Taxonomy/}} templates are left out.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  02:00, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding and EncycloPetey:, this isn't a "bot" task - it's clicking a button on TW and letting the script do the rest. You're welcome to request protection at RFPP, AN, or from an admin directly (*coughcough*) but chances of a request here being seen quickly are much smaller. Primefac (talk) 12:46, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Wow, I had no idea TW was that powerful. ...And it probably works off of the WikiLinks on the page, I assume. Very useful.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:00, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Clean urls of google books

A lots of urls need cleanups like this. This is neverending process, hence a bot might be able to do this job better. -- Pankaj Jain Capankajsmilyo (talk · contribs · count) 03:18, 28 October 2017 (UTC)

Is it possible to generate a self-replenishing list identifying links needing to be trimmed? bd2412 T 02:19, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

OK, now I understand that the edit is a removal of superfluous parameters from a query string, and not the addition, I am pretty sure that there is already a bot doing that. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 07:37, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

There is one for utm-related parameters in strings. I'm not sure if there's one to trim Google strings. --Izno (talk) 14:11, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Does the linked edit have consensus? The results are different and lesser in the second edit; search terms are not highlighted.

User:Citation bot simplifies Google Books URLs, as in this edit of the same starting material. It preserves the search terms but removes (as far as I can tell) truly superflous characters from the URL. – Jonesey95 (talk) 14:47, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

Don't just blindly remove the fragment identifiers. They can be there to point to the specific content on the page, for instance. — Omegatron (talk) 01:39, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

Edubase citations Suggestion

The UK Department of Education schools information site Edubase recently closed down and the information was moved to a new gov.uk site. The {{edubase}} template, which is embedded in {{Infobox UK school}} has been fixed to point to the new URLs. But there still exists a bunch of citations embedded in the school articles, which point at the old Edubase site and are therefore all {{dead link}}s now. I haven't been able to figure out to full extent of the issue, but the first 4 I have looked at - South Farnham School, Cobham Free School, The Royal Alexandra and Albert School, All Hallows Catholic School - all have one. I have randomly clicked through the rest of the articles in {{schools in Surrey}} and quite a few have Edubase references. But some don't. By the looks of things Category:England education navigational boxes by county should be the top level source for which pages to check. I have had a look at writing a bot to make the fixes but it looks a bit of a tall order for a bot novice, despite my being a coder in RL. I think the logic would be something like this:

• Find a school article
• Check if it contains any references which have URLs in the format http://www.edubase.gov.uk/establishment/<xyz>.xhtml?urn=<numeric_id>
• Edit the document
• Replace the reference URL with a URL in the format https://get-information-schools.service.gov.uk/Establishments/Establishment/Details/<numeric_id>
• Save the document with an appropriate summary

Anyone fancy doing this? Fob.schools (talk) 16:32, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

If the link or cite is tagged with a {{dead link}} template then this should be removed at the same time. Keith D (talk) 19:54, 29 October 2017 (UTC)

There seem to be somewhere near 700 instances in the data. Fob.schools (talk) 06:38, 31 October 2017 (UTC)

1000 (number)

The subsections of 1000 (number) have changed. What I would like to have happen is for

1. redirects from 1abc or 1,abc to [[1000 (number)#''s'']] changed to [[1000 (number)#''t'']]
2. links of the form [[1000 (number)#''s''|1''abc'']] changed to [[1000 (number)#''t''|1''abc'']

where s is one of

1. (blank)
2. 1001–1249
3. 1250–1499
4. 1500–1749
5. 1750–1999

   (or something similar with an ndash)

and t is

1. (blank)

   if abc is 000

2. 1001 to 1099

   otherwise, if a is 0

3. 1a00 to 1a99

   if a is a larger digit

The article was reorganized. There may be other similar changes in other articles, but let's start with 1000. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 01:36, 6 November 2017 (UTC)

Bot to move image sizes from image to image_size parameter

Could a bot run and do something similar to this for the English Wikipedia? The latter version is compatible with Visual Editor. -- Magioladitis (talk) 22:55, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Maybe I misunderstood my conversations with them, but I believe Nihlus is already working on something like this. Primefac (talk) 22:56, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Primefac The discussion above is when the image and the image size has already been stripped. I am discussing things like Category:Pages using deprecated image syntax. -- Magioladitis (talk) 23:00, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Yeah, they're similar but different. I could do this as it was on my list of things to take care of; I'll just need to code it. Nihlus 23:11, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Need a list of outdated Infoboxes

Use a bot or semi automated program to find infoboxes that are not updated to include upright factor image sizing support, and make a list to anable editors to make minor edits to update them. This is a simple edit like diff.

For those unaware of the concept, it is basically a way of making images responsive, explained in the picture tutorial as good practice. However defining an image with upright factors requires template support. Which is not yet accross the board.

It would be very helpful if someone could use a bot/quarry/magic thingie to create a to-do list of templates that are not yet fixed, getting a bot to actually do the fix is probably unwise. Dysklyver 12:11, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

 Working 1434 templates that invoke Module:InfoboxImage without using an "upright" parameter. Should be fairly straightforward to implement. Primefac (talk) 21:03, 12 November 2017 (UTC)

Ok thanks, can you ping me when its progressed, this page is too active for my watchlist. Dysklyver 09:15, 13 November 2017 (UTC)

Unlink bot

I regularly clean up links to bad sources. The interface does not permit linksearching by namespace, and in any case many links mentioned on Talk are being proposed as sources. I would like to suggest:

1. A bot to replace http[s]://somedomain.com/someurl with {{deprecated link|somedomain.com/someurl}} on Talk;
2. A page containing the list of domains to be substituted;
3. A review process for adding links to the bot's page.

This would :

1. Speed up review of deprecated links;
2. Reduce the chances of users adding bad sources in good faith following talk page suggestions.

Some examples:

• naturalnews.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
• infowars.com: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com
• stormfront.org: Linksearch en (insource) - meta - de - fr - simple - wikt:en - wikt:fr • Spamcheck • MER-C X-wiki • gs • Reports: Links on en - COIBot - COIBot-Local • Discussions: tracked - advanced - RSN • COIBot-Link, Local, & XWiki Reports - Wikipedia: en - fr - de • Google: search • meta • Domain: domaintools • AboutUs.com

Thoughts? Guy (Help!) 22:06, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Can you please clarify some terms? What is a "bad source"? What would the template "deprecated link" say?

You might want to get consensus for this sort of modification of editors' talk page posts at a place like VPP before making this request here. – Jonesey95 (talk) 00:26, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

"Bad sources" are sources people keep proposing/using despite being disallowed or plain bad with very few if any legitimate uses. {{Deprecated source}} is currently a basic template. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:48, 22 November 2017 (UTC)

make a translate bot

plase make translate bot to translate articles in other wikipedias and not in english wikipedia use google translate — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.219.141.214 (talk) 11:38, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Not a good task for a bot.. Tried, failed. Primefac (talk) 16:34, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Have you read Google TranslatePasta before? It's quite entertaining. Hasteur (talk) 23:37, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

please make bot for adding articles for footballdatabase.eu

footballdatabase.eu has more articles about football please make bot for adding articles for site — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.254.182.198 (talk) 09:06, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Not a good task for a bot. See Wikipedia:Bot requests/Frequently denied bots#Bots to create massive lists of stubs. Anomie⚔ 17:51, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

but in other wikipedias use the bot to adding articles example ceb.wikipedia.org — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.22.4.221 (talk) 07:35, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

That's their business, what other Wikipedias allow has no bearing on what we do. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 12:01, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

But most of the articles that users create are small articles and it takes a relatively long time to create, so the robot's difference with the users who make small articles is also faster than the robot. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.22.35.28 (talk) 12:42, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

The Cebuano wiki is a different wiki and has no weight here (additionally, there is a discussion to close it). You've been told no by three people now. Please move on. Nihlus 12:49, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Simple multi-article search and replace request

Can someone replace the following code:

[[File:Canis dirus reconstruction.jpg|right|50 px]]<!-- [[Dire wolf]] -->

with

[[File:Canis dirus reconstruction.jpg|thumb|right|Artist's restorations of a ''[[Canis dirus]]'', or dire wolf.]]<!-- [[Dire wolf]] -->

across these articles? Abyssal (talk) 15:34, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Abyssal, are you the creator of all the drafts you want to change?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:14, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Tom.RedingYup. Abyssal (talk) 16:20, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Abyssal,  Done, made 19 replacements (and found a typo exclusion).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:20, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Thanks, Tom.Reding! Abyssal (talk) 17:26, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

English Lsjbot

Perhaps there should be an English version of the Lsjbot thats on Swedish and Cebuano Wikipedias to generate stub articles interlinked in Wikidata for current redlinks for non-controversial topics like airports, locations (ex, comarcas of Spain, municipalities, political subdivisions ets), events (ex, aviation accidents), geology, small cities, military divisions and awards, technologies, plants, animals, medicine, etc...--PlanespotterA320 (talk) 02:35, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

No. --Izno (talk) 02:39, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Why not? There are many infoboxes and articles that are tedious to constantly write.--PlanespotterA320 (talk) 13:13, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

If you don't know about the Wikidata community's issues about Lsjbot, I have not much to say except go find out by doing some basic research. If you don't know about the English community's issues with Wikidata... I suggest you do some more basic research. If you don't know about the English community's issues with bot-made articles that are permastubs forever... I suggest you work on that as well. --Izno (talk) 13:23, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

A better answer is that this would need a consensus discussion at WP:Village pump (proposals) with strong participation. There are some English Wikipedia community members who are very strongly opposed to anything to do with Wikidata, so I would expect such a discussion not to reach consensus. Anomie⚔ 15:28, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

@Anomie: The main problem with Lsjbot IMO is that it has historically used poor quality databases to create millions of stubs that will never be maintained. For example, for locations, it uses GeoNames which is basically just a dumping ground for geography data with little to no quality controls. It also has the bad habit of creating thousands of articles about subjects that already exist in Wikipedia (but under slightly different names) that have to be manually merged. I'm also not happy with its plant and animal articles since it basically just created a time capsule of 2013 taxonomy (according to the Catalog of Life, which has better data quality than GeoNames, but also has its own problems). No one is handling the thousands of taxonomy changes that take place every year to keep them up to date. As it is, we barely have enough volunteer editors on English Wikipedia to keep our species articles relatively free of rot, and we could easily create 10 times more species articles via bot, but we would also need to grow our biology editor pool by ten times. Kaldari (talk) 06:30, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

Echoing everything Kaldari said. Absolutely not. Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 23:19, 4 January 2018 (UTC).

Automatic archiving

Running IABot on an article checks whether an archive exists for each citation, and adds links to existing archives, but if an archive does not exist then it does not create one. Is there a bot (or script) which can be run on an article to create archives for all external links, or could someone who has the skills create one? In view of the constant link rot problems, this would be incredibly useful. Dudley Miles (talk) 08:52, 12 December 2017 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678: Since it is your bot, I figured I'd ping you. --Elisfkc (talk) 02:27, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

If you run my tool and check the optional checkbox to archive all non-dead references, Archives will be created.—CYBERPOWER (Merry Christmas) 03:46, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

@Cyberpower678: Thanks for your bot which is extremely useful, but it appears to use existing archives, not create new ones. I cannot get it to run at present but looking at it when I ran it on List of Sites of Special Scientific Interest in Suffolk on 6 September at [14], on ref 42, Bangrove Wood, it has added an archive created on 19 December 2013, but on the following ref 43, Barking Woods, it has not added an archive. I ticked the checkbox. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:44, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

The bot will not archive websites if there already exists an archive. The devs at the Wayback Machine do not like other bots to start pushing archive requests to their servers, as they have their own bots doing that already. If you want it to use a different archive, you can tell the bot to use something different under the URL management tool. Also some pages may not archive as they are somehow blocking the Wayback Machine from crawling the page.—CYBERPOWER (Merry Christmas) 16:07, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Thanks very much for clarifying. Dudley Miles (talk) 16:36, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

Substitution of music infobox templates

I no longer have the time to maintain my bot's task 1, and it has been more difficult than I expected, partially due to AWB quirks and a lack of helpful documentation. So, I would like someone else to help substitute the following templates, removing integer parameters in those which are named "Infobox", and removing hidden comments in the first line of the templates. If more than one of these is on a page then all should be substituted in the same edit. The bot does not really need to do anything else since most of the cleanup is handled by the substitution through Module:Unsubst-infobox (although if you want you can additionally replace |length={{Duration|m=mm|s=ss}} with |length=mm:ss and stuff like that).

• {{Infobox single}} (returns {{Infobox song}} when substituted)
• {{Infobox song}} (returns itself when substituted)
• {{Infobox album}} (returns itself when substituted)
• {{Singles}} (returns itself when substituted)
• {{Extra chronology}} (returns itself when substituted)
• {{Extra album cover}} (returns itself when substituted)
• {{Extra track listing}} (returns itself when substituted)
• {{External music video}} (returns itself when substituted)
• {{Extra music sample}} (returns {{Audio sample}} when substituted)
• {{Audiosample}} (returns {{Audio sample}} when substituted)
• {{Audio sample}} (returns itself when substituted)

Furthermore, pages in these categories should not have the templates substituted due to errors which need to be fixed manually for various reasons. I would have done the substitutions sooner by using User:AnomieBOT/docs/TemplateSubster but it would substitute all of the transclusions, and at a very slow rate (since AnomieBOT does a lot of other things and never runs tasks in parallel). The table nesting errors are probably bot-fixable but I couldn't do it with AWB and I can't write in Python.

• Category:Audio sample to be checked (1)
• Category:Music infoboxes with Module:String errors (3)
• Category:Music infoboxes with malformed table placement (0)

I believe these would not count as cosmetic changes, since some of these are per the result of TfD discussions which closed with a consensus to merge, and because pages in these templates with deprecated parameters are automatically included in a tracking category and would be removed from the category upon substitution. About 200,000 pages would be affected. Jc86035 (talk) 07:33, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

@Jc86035: I should be able to assist with these. Do you have your bot configuration for these tasks that you can send to me? I'll still need to file a BRFA, but would like to make sure it is manageable for me as well. Nihlus 08:01, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

@Nihlus: My bot task so far has solely focused on removing articles from the error categories and not actually substituting the templates or making other fixes, although I can send my AWB configuration to you if it helps. Jc86035 (talk) 08:04, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

@Jc86035: Sure. Although, I am not sure how to exclude pages in certain categories as I've never attempted that, if it's even possible. And are you going to be running your bot still for the tasks mentioned in the BRFA you filed? Nihlus 08:18, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

@Nihlus: No, I don't think so. I don't think I have the time to do it and an experienced pywiki user could do the fixes much faster than I could.

Most of these fixes, for the Module:String errors, would probably involve changing the parameter name from |Last/Next single/album= to |prev/next_title= to bypass the Module:String fixes if there's no date in the parameter and the title doesn't contain any slashes (and removing the italics, bold, quote marks (only if paired at start/end or the title is enclosed in a link – see AWB configuration for how irritating these are)), and wait three to twenty years for the Wikidata-compatible infoboxes to come around for the dates to be added. (Note that |Last single= and similar can also occasionally be |last_single=.) There are also

other problems

chronologies where brackets are used outside the quotes/italics for the titles to indicate an acoustic version, a remix, a re-release, etc., and those probably need extra handling or a separate parameter (e.g. |prev_type=acoustic to add "(acoustic)") after the song title (I haven't updated the templates for these yet because I didn't take them into account). Some of these may need to be removed e.g. "(digital download)" which is meaningless these days (probably manual except for acoustic, remix, rerelease, remastered) chronologies where a featured artist is indicated in brackets, possibly with <small>, after the song/album title; the featured artist should be removed chronologies where an extended play is labelled "(EP)" and "EP" is not part of the actual title; remove "(EP)" (probably manual) chronologies where the formatting is malformed; most of these have been fixed but there are still quite a few with misplaced italics and the like (probably manual at this point, the bot's already fixed a few thousand of them) chronologies where the album or single is "TBA"; I'm not sure what to do with these but I think they would be retained for albums, with the title moved to the |prev/next_title= parameter from the |Last/Next album= parameter, and removed for singles chronologies where US/UK or other is indicated and breaks the bracket parsing (example); these should be split into two manually (example) because there are not a lot of them chronologies where three or more songs are in a single and |prev_title2=/|next_title2= can't handle them; if there is only one link for the songs then it should be split into one link for each song separated by " / " with all links having same target (probably manual) chronologies for A-side/B-side singles with one article for both songs; same as above but use |prev/next_title2= parameters for second title chronologies where there is a <br> tag inside a song title; these probably need to be handled manually, or &shy; or a zero-width space should be added based on context? not sure (probably manual) chronologies where there is a month inside the year bracket; the month should be removed chronologies where the years in the brackets are linked; remove the links variations of subtemplates inside each other (except templates not in the above list like {{YouTube}}, which should be nested); move the second-outermost pair of right curly brackets (and repeat if needed) so that the templates are not nested {{Audio sample}} or the templates being merged into it where the description is just "Artist name – Song title" or similar without any other qualifiers (example); remove the description

There are also other probably-automatable fixes which do not remove pages from the error categories:

other problems

{{Duration}} used where there is only one value in |length=; convert it to a plain mm:ss or h:mm:ss time because the infoboxes handle it automatically now "soundtrack chronologies" and similar for franchises/members of a group and not artists/composers (example)); I believe consensus is to remove the chronology parameters or the {{Extra chronology}} containing them country flags should be changed to the name of the country in brackets, possibly within <small> but not sure date ranges like "1998-1999", "1998-99" and "1998-9" should be changed to "1998–1999" (en dash); date ranges like "November 1998 - April 1999" should be changed to "November 1998 – April 1999" (nbsp? + en dash + space) overcapitalization of genre names; only the first in the list may be capitalized (especially if the list is comma-separated). Obviously excluding always-capitalized genre names like R&B possibly others?

Naturally, I did not get around to any of these, and none of these are in the AWB configuration. Pretty much all of the AWB configuration is adding <br /> and fixing italics, quote marks, brackets, etc..

This discussion (and some others on Ojorojo's talk page) may help. Jc86035 (talk) 09:07, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

The page list is probably too long for AWB to do on its own (I think it sets its own limit at 25,000), so I would collate all of the pages transcluding the templates into a text document, remove duplicate lines with BBEdit or another similarly featured text editor (leaving one of each group of duplicates), then do the same for the pages in the error categories, then stick both lists into the same text document and remove duplicate lines (leaving none of the duplicate lines). Jc86035 (talk) 09:19, 23 October 2017 (UTC)

In my ongoing quest to clean up the music templates, I'm happy to inform everyone that the Singles template is now free of errors and only contains valid template fields (be they old or new). - X201 (talk) 08:42, 16 November 2017 (UTC)

Nihlus, are you doing or going to do this task (just the substitution, not the other things)? If you aren't it's fine since I might be able to do this myself at some point in the next four months. Jc86035 (talk) 08:04, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Can anyone remove all the following lines of code from all of the listed articles?

Code and articles on this page. Abyssal (talk) 02:58, 20 December 2017 (UTC)

Still really need some help with this. Abyssal (talk) 04:11, 25 December 2017 (UTC)

Any takers? Abyssal (talk) 14:26, 2 January 2018 (UTC)

@Abyssal:, so, for every article in the section "Articles", you want to remove any line that matches with any item in "Code"? -- Gabrielchihonglee (talk) 12:33, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Y Done by John of Reading. @Abyssal: Just checked some pages and seems that someone did that for you already. --Gabrielchihonglee (talk) 12:48, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

wwikia bot

please make bot for adding articles from wikia example nintendo.wikia.com — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.75.62.30 (talk) 07:05, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

 Not done. We do not have bots automatically create articles. Full stop, end of story. Primefac (talk) 16:09, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

We can if there is consensus per WP:MASSCREATION. It would have to be a good reason though. —  HELLKNOWZ   ▎TALK 19:38, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

You are absolutely correct. Striking my comment (but still saying "no" as there is no community consensus). Primefac (talk) 19:58, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Make a bot that changes your discord online states to green - yellow - red - invisible every millisecond

title says it all — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:247:c101:b6c0:599:60b6:ce0b:32cc (talk)

Impossible We have no way of supporting Discord integration. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:26, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Also, this is similar to the general idea of "online status" bots which existed in the past and (if I recall correctly) were stopped per WP:PERF. Anomie⚔ 19:03, 25 January 2018 (UTC)

Template:Redirect category shell

Would it be possible for a bot to automatically fix errors like Special:Permalink/778228736, where some redirect category templates are placed within {{Redirect category shell}} but some aren't? feminist (talk) 10:29, 10 January 2018 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: you might be interested in this. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 23:37, 20 January 2018 (UTC)

Ohh, yes, I actually have a script that does exactly this. Perhaps after I finish fixing some unbalanced curly brackets I found recently.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:33, 21 January 2018 (UTC)

@Feminist:  Done; 901 #Rs with stray {{R}}s fixed. I rolled these into a bunch of other error fixes.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  02:05, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Thank you. feminist (talk) 03:37, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

bot for upbayt articles

please make bot for updayt articles example upbayt sport players stats updayt games and goals and updayt league tables — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.219.145.98 (talk) 08:19, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

What are "upbayt articles"? Are you the same person that requested bot for creating new categorys above? --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 19:08, 28 January 2018 (UTC)

I'd guess that's a typo of "update". Primefac (talk) 00:11, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

My turn: I'd guess that 5.219.145.98 is the same person who initiated Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 75#please make bot for adding articles for footballdatabase.eu, Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 75#make a translate bot and Wikipedia:Bot requests/Archive 75#wwikia bot. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 10:51, 29 January 2018 (UTC)

Bot to update articles

please make bot for updayt articles example updayt soccer player stats updayt games and goals and updayt soccer tables — Preceding unsigned comment added by 5.22.34.89 (talk • contribs) 08:05, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

geoname bot

please make geoname bot to adding articles from geoname.org — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.255.6.103 (talk • contribs) 10:26, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

catalogueoflife bot

please make catalogueoflife bot for adding articles from catalogueoflife.org — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.255.6.103 (talk • contribs) 10:43, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Removing captions of deleted images in infoboxes

Hello fellow Wikipedians -

The image removal bots (e.g. CommonsDelinker) are doing their jobs to remove deleted images but I have noticed they don't delete the existing captions if there were one. For example, this diff removed a deleted photo but not the existing caption. I was wondering if there could be one which will remove the captions on infoboxes without images or is there already one? Iggy (talk) 22:04, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

On the one hand, Iggy, I can see your point. On the other hand, the captions do not show if there is no image, so it's not really super-necessary to add an additional check to remove the caption text. However, if you think that this should be done, it might be worth bringing it up at WP:BOTN, because it would really involve changing the existing code rather than making an entirely new bot. Primefac (talk) 22:07, 8 December 2017 (UTC)

One problem is that captions may be provided in different ways. But the main concern of the bot is to prevent the position of the former image from appearing as a redlink. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 16:30, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Blacklisted URL

I had been using a link to a pdf article as citation in my a articles on Tamil films.

This has been used in numerous articles for the past one year or so. Now I find that this link URL is blacklisted and a Bot has placed a notification to that effect in many articles. It will be a tiring job to replace the link in individual articles.

Is it possible to do "replace ..... with ...."

The blacklisted link is: https://chasingcinema.files.wordpress.com/2015/09/text.pdf
to be replaced with: https://indiancine.ma/texts/indiancine.ma%3AEncyclopedia_of_Indian_Cinema/text.pdf

Thank you.--UKSharma3 (User | talk | Contribs) 10:25, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

According to MediaWiki_talk:Spam-whitelist#Wordpress, files.wordpress.com has been removed from the global blacklist and a bot should go around and remove the blacklist templates in due course. DH85868993 (talk) 10:43, 7 January 2018 (UTC)

Bot to tag article talk pages for WikiProject New York City

As per this discussion on my talk page, there are about 433 New York City Subway station articles tagged by WikiProject New York City Public Transportation, the vast majority of which are missing a tag for WikiProject New York City. The list is here. I was wondering if a bot could go around and add {{WPNYC}} tags to the talk pages that are missing them. epicgenius (talk) 21:28, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

While tagging these, it would be useful to set a WT:NYC project |importance= for the pages that are obviously low, mid, high, etc., and leave the unsure-importance ones blank for later assessment.

Regarding |class=, would inheriting {{WikiProject Trains}}' |class= be desired/appropriate?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:57, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: Yes, I think it would be OK to inherit classes from {{WikiProject Trains}}. The importance could be set as low for all of these tags, since I don't think any single station is particularly essential to NYC itself. epicgenius (talk) 22:27, 8 January 2018 (UTC)

Epicgenius, BRFA filed.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  00:03, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

@Tom.Reding: Thanks. Also, the |transportation-importance= parameter is redundant since the vast majority of the time, it was already defined under the WP:TRAINS template. epicgenius (talk) 05:49, 9 January 2018 (UTC)

Daily page views tag

I would like to request that a Bot takes care of all the faulty Daily page view tags on possibly thousands of articles talk pages. They just die and dont work. They need to be replaced to work again. Most likely the same situation on most articles tagged with it at some point. Like here Talk:Oba_Chandler, it just simply dies and turns blank. Ping me for questions or confirmation that a bot takes care of the issue.--BabbaQ (talk) 22:20, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

​A null edit or other type of purge will refresh the stats. No need to have a bot do it. Primefac (talk) 22:31, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

All I am thinking is that because this issue is concerning thousands of articles it is a problem beyong manual work. --BabbaQ (talk) 22:33, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Users truly interested in the stats will refresh them themselves, it seems to me. Maybe a purge link can be added to each template so that users don't have to figure it out, but otherwise, this doesn't seem like a great or necessary task to me. --Izno (talk) 23:06, 26 January 2018 (UTC)

Fixing CWGC URLs

Would it be possible to have a bot fix the CWGC (Commonwealth War Graves Commission) URLs from the previous format (which no longer works) to the current one? URLs of the form http://www.cwgc.org/search/casualty_details.aspx?Casualty=XXXX should be in the form http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty/XXXX/ (not sure if the trailing / is needed, possibly it is). The same applies to the cemeteries, which were in the form http://www.cwgc.org/search/cemetery_details.aspx?cemetery=XXXX&mode=1 and should instead be in the form http://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery/XXXX. The casualty and cemetery ID numbers are not a set number of digits long, they seem to vary between 4 and 7 digits, from what I have seen, but might be less and more digits as well. This has been broken for nearly 2 years now. As of 30 January 2018:

• 1,638 for http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty
• 1,641 for http://www.cwgc.org/search/casualty_details.aspx?
• 1,219 for http://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery
• 839 for http://www.cwgc.org/search/cemetery_details.aspx?

So a total of 839+1641 = 2480 links to fix. @Pigsonthewing: as we discussed this back then. See also {{CWGC}} and {{CWGC cemetery}}. Carcharoth (talk) 00:14, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Support a fix, but preferably by applying the templates, and ideally by using bare templates, so that the values are called from Wikidata. Also, @RexxS: from the earlier discussion. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 12:05, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Example of an edit converting URLs to the correct template: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Menin_Gate&diff=663070153&oldid=662281650

Example of fixing some casualty URLs: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Thiepval_Memorial&diff=prev&oldid=823125197

Example of fixing cemetery URLs: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Commonwealth_War_Graves_Commission&diff=prev&oldid=823121582

More examples available if needed. Carcharoth (talk) 12:12, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Coding... seems like a fairly straight-forward fix. Primefac (talk) 13:43, 30 January 2018 (UTC)

Many thanks, Primefac. If you have any questions, please ask. If you could ping me when this needs discussing again, I'd appreciate it, as I'd like to follow this process closely and maybe tweak the request depending on what you are able to do. Carcharoth (talk) 15:58, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

PS. this edit to one of the templates mentioned above seems to have reduced the number of wrong URLs for cemeteries from 839 to 536 (that is 303 links). That template is currently transcluded 195 times, so allowing for multiple use of the template on some pages, I presume that edit accounts for most of the reduction. Carcharoth (talk) 16:13, 31 January 2018 (UTC)

Further update: this edit (using search and replace in an external text editor) fixed 355 of the casualty URLs, though the numbers of the links that need fixing changed by different numbers for some reason I can't quite work out. Also did some other fixes on articles with 10 or more links.

• 2,299 for http://www.cwgc.org/find-war-dead/casualty
• 981 for http://www.cwgc.org/search/casualty_details.aspx?
• 1,534 for http://www.cwgc.org/find-a-cemetery/cemetery
• 524 for http://www.cwgc.org/search/cemetery_details.aspx?

So a total of 524+981 = 1505 links to fix. Carcharoth (talk) 18:44, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

BRFA filed.​ Primefac (talk) 22:24, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Report on paid editors

Can someone create a report with the following information in a table based on {{Connected contributor (paid)}}?

• Every editor listed in any of the Userx parameters.
• The associated employerx parameter.
• The associated clientx parameter.
• The article page associated with this.
• Whether the user is indefinitely blocked.

You should skip any pages that aren't in the Talk: namespace. (e.g. general disclosures on user pages, etc). ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 21:38, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

Personally, I'd be curious to compare those numbers to the stats on {{paid}} usage. Primefac (talk) 22:57, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

 Doing... @BU Rob13: I've emailed you about this. Mdann52 (talk) 07:49, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Thousands of articles generating errors

The new form of {{lang-xx|italic}} without '' in the second part, has generated errors in thousands of articles. Thus, I suggest to bring back the old form of the template in which the old versions which have the markup for italics are reconsidered as correct ! Mark Mercer (talk) 17:51, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

This conversation should move to Template talk:lang. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:26, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Replace parameter in all MMA bio infoboxes

Replace the "other_names" param to "nickname", in only mixed martial arts biographies. Can someone create that? Thanks. TBMNY (talk) 17:49, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

TBMNY, is there a consensus to implement this change? Primefac (talk) 18:04, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

There isn't any, but this wouldn't be controversial in the least bit, as the other_names parameter has been used exclusively for nicknames in MMA bios, but the output "Nickname(s)" is more appropriate in that spot. If you need consensus, I can try to get it, but again, I feel like this is a pretty basic change that isn't controversial in any way. TBMNY (talk) 18:15, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

There was a large discussion recently at WT:RL regarding nicknames (and whether to even use them in an infobox), as well as a while ago at WT:RU and a few other places. So yes, I definitely think you need to get a consensus for this sort of mass change. Primefac (talk) 18:28, 15 December 2017 (UTC)

Needs wider discussion. Mdann52 (talk) 09:32, 16 December 2017 (UTC)}

CR and CRH S-line templates

Most articles for Chinese railway lines were recently renamed, and a lot of pages need to be updated. Could someone make a bot to

• standardize the naming and categorization of these templates (except CRT templates), renaming all "High-Speed", "Passenger" and "Intercity" to lowercase, matching the name of the line article (this could be done by appending "Railway" to that part of the template name for each template and finding the redirect target), changing CR to CRH for high-speed lines (redirects may need to be deleted manually), and appending <noinclude>[[Category:People's Republic of China rail transport succession templates]]</noinclude> if the page is not already in that category;
• update Template:CR lines and Template:CRH lines to the current article titles (some links will break when pages are purged due to inconsistent capitalization and this is probably unavoidable without a lot of unnecessary redirects);
• go through articles where the CRH templates are used, changing |system=CR to |system=CRH and updating template/page titles and station names (maybe adding |notemid=Part of the [[Name high-speed railway]] for sub-lines which are part of designated corridor lines); and
• nominate all unused redirects for CSD or RfD?

There may be other issues with the templates and articles which I haven't addressed. This should affect about 100 templates and 450 articles (a surprisingly small number, given the number of railway stations in China). Consider doing genfixes.

Thanks, Jc86035 (talk) 17:36, 22 December 2017 (UTC)

p and pp in Sfn template

There are two similar parameters in Template:Sfn, p and pp. p is for a single page; pp is for a range of pages. Sometimes users (like myself..) put a range of pages for p, or a single page for pp. It seems like a good bot task to run through sfn templates and if it is a range of pages, change the parameter from p to pp (see John Glenn history for a recent example). Another thing that could be tacked on is replacing hyphens and emdashes with endashes for the pp parameter.

It may make more sense to just make p and pp one parameter in the Sfn template, and have the template respond correctly if it is a single page or range o pages. Long story short: there are several solutions to this that can be automated, and it would save some editing time. Kees08 (Talk) 01:16, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

I think this is an issue to bring up at WT:MOS first; they may really (really) want to have a separate designation for "p" and "pp". Currently there is no error flag thrown for "p with multiple pages" or "pp with a single page" so there isn't really isn't a good way (other than a regex in-text search or possibly petscan) to find the pages with this issue (and even then it'll likely throw a lot of false positives). So yeah, go to MOS and figure out if combining the params is desirable, or if this sort of cleanup is even necessary. Primefac (talk) 01:38, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

The same difference is in any of the citation templates such as "cite web" or "cite news", except that the blanks say "page" and "pages", but show up in the references section as "p" and "pp". Whatever it is, consistency across the referencing styles is probably an issue. — Maile (talk) 02:09, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

A persistent challenge is the edge case of pages like "page 2-1", where the page number is "two hyphen one", i.e. page one of section two. There are a number of these out there, and they make automated rendering of page numbers challenging. – Jonesey95 (talk) 05:15, 4 February 2018 (UTC)

Good point, which probably kills any thought of using a bot for this. Kees08 (Talk) 04:43, 8 February 2018 (UTC)

Not sure if there is a proper way to close this, but I do not think it is possible for the rationale stated above. Kees08 (Talk) 18:50, 21 February 2018 (UTC)

bot

hi please creating bot for adding Wikipedia articles and pages to wikidata example Portugal–Thailand relations not item in wikidata but I creating — Preceding unsigned comment added by 37.254.181.81 (talk) 09:47, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Such a bot would be run on Wikidata, not on Wikipedia. Thus, the place to request such a task would be d:Wikidata:Bot requests. In any case, I'm pretty sure that they already have such a bot, possibly more than one. --Redrose64 🌹 (talk) 14:01, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Copy RCDB number to Wikidata

I made a category called Category:Articles needing their RCDB number moved to Wikidata, which has articles placed in it by having an RCDB number in {{Infobox roller coaster}} or {{RCDB}}. I was able to keep up with copying these numbers to the Wikidata entries for a while, but now I'm having trouble. I'd love if someone could make a bot that would be able to help me out. Elisfkc (talk) 02:25, 13 December 2017 (UTC)

@Elisfkc: Copying them into Wikidata should be possible with Harvesttemplates. Removing them here can be done with AWB once that is complete. You can ask at d:WD:Bot requests if you need help with harvesttemplates, and I can remove them here if you would like, after copying. --Izno (talk) 02:42, 29 December 2017 (UTC)

Symbol parameter in Infobox former country

There was a change (relatively) recently to {{Infobox former country}} in which the symbol parameter was changed to symbol_type_article. (See also: Template talk: Infobox former country#"Symbol" not currently functional.) Other than the parameter's name nothing about it has changed (at least from the user's point of view) so it should just be a straight swap. Since the template is used on >3000 pages this seems like a job best suited to a bot and apparently there is one already which hunts down depreciated parameters. Could this please be added to that bot's tasks (or if not another bot set up to do so). Thanks. Alphathon /'æɫ.fə.θɒn/ ^(talk) 16:35, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

Coding... Nihlus 17:37, 30 October 2017 (UTC)

@Nihlus: What's the status of this? (No rush, just trying to clear out the Bot requests list so botops can find things to do more easily.) ~ Rob₁₃^Talk 17:17, 9 December 2017 (UTC)

Coding... --Gabrielchihonglee (talk) 13:59, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Bots/Requests_for_approval/Gabrielchihonglee-Bot_3 --Gabrielchihonglee (talk) 01:18, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

thepeerage.com

We seem to have many instances of {{Cite web}} with |publisher= set to [http://www.thepeerage.com ThePeerage.com] or [http://www.thepeerage.com/info.htm ThePeerage.com]; for example on Henry de Beaumont.

This needs to be changed to |website=thepeerage.com. Can anyone oblige, please? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 18:36, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

I changed the requested result to "thepeerage.com" above, which appears to be the correct address. – Jonesey95 (talk) 18:40, 26 November 2017 (UTC)

@Pigsonthewing: so u wanna change *{{cite web|last=Lundy |first=Darryl |date=31 January 2011 |url=http://www.thepeerage.com/p10288.htm#i102873 |title=Henry Beaumont, 1st Earl of Buchan |publisher=[http://www.thepeerage.com ThePeerage.com]}} into *{{cite web|last=Lundy |first=Darryl |date=31 January 2011 |url=http://www.thepeerage.com/p10288.htm#i102873 |title=Henry Beaumont, 1st Earl of Buchan |website=thepeerage.com}}? --Gabrielchihonglee (talk) 13:10, 15 January 2018 (UTC)

@Gabrielchihonglee: Precisely so; and likewise where the original version is http://www.thepeerage.com/info.htm. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 13:16, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

Coding..., Got it, thanks for your explanation! --Gabrielchihonglee (talk) 13:50, 16 January 2018 (UTC)

@Gabrielchihonglee: Any news? Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 22:44, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

BRFA filed --Gabrielchihonglee (talk) 23:17, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Remove Dorlands parameter from Infobox anatomy set

Hi bot developers, I'd like to request a bot to go through all articles using {{Infobox anatomy}} and subtemplates:

• {{Infobox bone}}
• {{Infobox brain}}
• {{Infobox artery}}
• {{Infobox vein}}
• {{Infobox lymph}}
• {{Infobox nerve}}
• {{Infobox neuron}}
• {{Infobox ligament}}
• {{Infobox muscle}}
• {{Infobox embryology}}

There has been consensus to remove the "Dorlands" parameter - see Template talk:Infobox anatomy and here. "Dorlands" links to a proprietary dictionary that is no longer maintained, and as our articles (even stubs) are of equal or greater length and it is proprietary and no longer maintained, editors have agreed that it should be deleted.

I'd like to ask if a bot could seem through all articles using these infoboxes and remove empty and full parameters of Dorlands, DorlandsPre, DorlandsSuf, DorlandsID

We are discussing if any other parameters should be removed or moved to Wikidata and it's probably I'll be here again in a few weeks to request an update to articles based on that discussion... but for the moment just hoping if we can remove all the Dorlands links. I realise I also will have to update the infobox documentation and the subtemplates and I will get to that soon. --Tom (LT) (talk) 01:10, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

@Tom (LT): I can look into this. Can you create the tracking categories and link them here so I can use that to run the bot as well as tell how many pages need corrected? Nihlus 01:17, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

@Nihlus category is here, will be populated soon: Category:Anatomy infobox template using Dorlands — Preceding unsigned comment added by Tom (LT) (talk • contribs)

@Tom (LT): I went ahead and dusted off my searcher and compiled a list at User:Nihlus/dorlands. Does this look correct? There are 3,410 pages that include one of those four parameters. Nihlus 02:07, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

@Nihlus yep that's a correct list. Could you also in addition to removing the data, remove vacant parameters (eg "DorlandsID = ")? --Tom (LT) (talk) 04:06, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

and for my own learning, what have I done wrong in the code here? {{Infobox anatomy}}? --Tom (LT) (talk) 04:06, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

I don't think anything is wrong with the code. The job queue just has to go through each of those pages that use the template to pick up on which ones satisfy that condition. It can take a long time for highly used templates. Also, my bot will remove both used and unused strings. Nihlus 04:12, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

BRFA filed. Nihlus 04:30, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

thanks Nihlus. We have also moved "FMA", "MeshName", "MeshNumber", "GrayPage" and "GraySubject" to Wikidata, so if your bot if possible could remove those too, that would be appreciated. --Tom (LT) (talk) 01:16, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

@Tom (LT): Do you have a link to the discussion for removing those? Nihlus 01:20, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

They have been moved as per here Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Anatomy#Further_movement_of_infobox_data_to_wikidata and FMA has been moved here Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Anatomy/Archive_9#Terminologia_Anatomica_ID_and_FMA_ID_addition_completed. To be clear these have been moved to Wikidata. Mesh terms and FMA terms already display only based on the Wikidata entry (see the {{Infobox anatomy}} code) and Gray's anatomy links are preserved in this template ({{Gray's}}). --Tom (LT) (talk) 01:27, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

@Tom (LT):  Done. Let me know if there are any issues. Nihlus 10:23, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Hello @Nihlus:. Thank you very much for bot run. As information, I happened to see that there are MeSH data at page thalamus and fornix (neuroanatomy). Would you take a look at that page? Thanks. --Was a bee (talk) 14:06, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

@Was a bee: Thanks. That's because I'm stupid and assumed the additional parameters were on the same pages as the Dorands parameters. I'll research and rerun it soon. Nihlus 19:54, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

@Was a bee and Tom (LT): Should {{Infobox medical condition}} be included in this run as well? Nihlus 20:04, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

@Nihlus: {{Infobox medical condition}} is not included. Data export to Wikidata was done only for anatomy related infoboxes listed at the top of this section. So for other templates, keep their data. Because about other template, it is needed different discussion and data export. --Was a bee (talk) 22:10, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

@Was a bee and Tom (LT): Okay, the bot ran again on the templates above. It should all be done now (I hope). Nihlus 22:14, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Nihlus... I will run through and update the template series, and advise of anything the bot has missed within a week or so. --Tom (LT) (talk) 10:02, 13 February 2018 (UTC)

@Nihlus if you wouldn't mind also running through the articles in this list: Category:Anatomy infobox template using unsupported parameters and also here Category:Anatomy infobox template using Dorlands there are a couple of stragglers :P. --Tom (LT) (talk) 09:49, 14 February 2018 (UTC)

Thanks Nihlus, this task is done. --Tom (LT) (talk) 03:15, 18 February 2018 (UTC)

Convert template

I've had a small discussion with another user saying that when using the measurements for metres and order flipping, e.g. convert|x|m|ftin|order=flip, the ftin is identified as unnecessary. A bot will help to run the task of removing the unnecessary 'ftin|' part of the source which leaves us with 'convert|x|m|ftin|order=flip', where x is the number, in metres, of the height. Iggy (Swan) 15:39, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

I see no difference between your initial string and your desired string, but I may be missing something. In any event, removing "ftin", which it sounds like you are suggesting, can result in different output:

{{convert|3|m|ftin|order=flip}} → 9 feet 10 inches (3 m)

{{convert|3|m|order=flip}} → 9.8 feet (3 m)

Can you please clarify your request? – Jonesey95 (talk) 15:55, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

@Jonesey95: - 6 feet 7 inches (2 m) is what happens when the 2 goes in as 'x', I have sampled others and the feet, inches stops at 3.00 m with the desired string. This suggestion works for lengths less than 2.99 metres which makes 'ftin|' unnecessary. Iggy (Swan) 16:09, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

I see no reason to remove "ftin" from these templates. It does no harm, and having templates used consistently within an article is more straightforward than removing "ftin" only in those instances where the length is 2.99 meters or less. What if someone wants to change a length from 2.8 to 3.2 meters? With the original editor's desired "ftin" already present, the template would work as desired. Without it, the template's output will be inconsistent and possibly confusing to editors and readers. I suggest that you seek consensus for this change. – Jonesey95 (talk) 16:18, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

For reference, below are 4 and 5m (first option has |ftin|)

13 feet 1 inch (4 m)

13 feet (4 m)

16 feet 5 inches (5 m)

16 feet (5 m)

I would argue that saying 5m=16ft (instead of the almost-16.5 that it actually is) can be misleading. Regardless, I think Jonesey is right; there's no harm in having the parameter, and if it's added in there's an extra level of accuracy.

Of course, if you can get consensus for this change, then obviously a bot task would be the way to go. Primefac (talk) 16:22, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

@Primefac: - for lengths less than 2.99m. Professional sportspeople will not reach 3m in height anytime soon. Iggy (Swan) 16:27, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

So in other words, you want to remove the |ftin= parameter from infoboxes where {{convert}} is used. That's an entirely different request than removing all instances. Primefac (talk) 16:30, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

It is yes. A new request is below. Iggy (Swan) 16:36, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Convert template in infoboxes

I've had a small discussion with another user saying that when using the measurements for metres and order flipping, e.g. convert|x|m|ftin|order=flip, the ftin is identified as unnecessary for infobox height measurement. A bot will help to run the task of removing the unnecessary 'ftin|' part of the source in the infoboxes which leaves us with 'convert|x|m|order=flip', where x is the number, in metres, of the height of the person in the infobox. Iggy (Swan) 16:36, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

On the one hand, this is a straightforward task. On the other hand, it's entirely within the realms of WP:COSMETICBOT; as mentioned in the section above, there's no change in the template if |ftin= isn't used. I might be missing something, but I will pass on this one. Primefac (talk) 16:52, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

@Primefac: Would it not be similar to other deprecated parameters that we've removed before? Nihlus 23:05, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

It's not a deprecated parameter, though. This would be removing |ftin= from |height={{convert|ftin=...}} in an infobox, not removing |ftin= from the infobox. Primefac (talk) 23:26, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Ah, okay. I misunderstood. Thanks for clarifying. Nihlus 23:30, 3 February 2018 (UTC)

Not a good task for a bot.. Marking this as a subsection of the above, since it kinda is. Primefac (talk) 01:44, 9 February 2018 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Adopt-a-user project - stripping templates from inactive users

I am trying to sort out the unholy mess that is Adopt-a-User with a view to bringing it back to life in a somewhat modified guise. Most tasks are now done, but I am left with a problem that there are two types of template on the user pages of inactive editors which will regularly need removing. With redundant templates, no-one can see who is genuinely seeking support, nor, indeed, who is genuinely able to offer support to them.

Mine is a related call for assistance to this recent one, but is actually a lot more urgent and difficult to deal with manually.

• Problem A: We have new editors who can freely put the {{adoptme}} template on their page whenever they want to seek assistance under this scheme. I found 109 editors that showed up in Category:Wikipedians seeking to be adopted in Adopt-a-user. I've since manually stripped out all inactive newcomers, leaving just 18 active ones. But this task will need to be repeated regularly so as to remove it from editors who have not been active for 4 weeks or more.
• Problem B: Worse still is this: Category:Wikipedians seeking to adopt in Adopt-a-user, currently with 269 experienced editors listed who have {{adopting}} on their userpages. I sampled 52 entries, and conclude only 7% are active, productive editors today. I need to strip out these templates every month from all editors who have been inactive for, say 4 to 6 weeks, plus anyone at all who has total edit counts of less than 500, as they don't meet the criteria for experience.

In both cases I would also wish to leave messages on the Talk pages of those two sets of editors to explain the template's removal, and what their options are if the editor resumes activity. I hope this all makes sense, and will be very grateful for any support that can be given. (Note: I will be unavailable to respond to follow-up questions between 3rd and 6th February.) Many thanks. Nick Moyes (talk) 20:24, 1 February 2018 (UTC)

Coding... -- Gabrielchihonglee (talk) 23:27, 2 February 2018 (UTC)

@Nick Moyes: I've basically finished the coding process. I just have a question about the 500 edit requirement, where is that requirement listed? Thanks! (Perhaps I should add a link to the policy on their talk page in the bot message) -- Gabrielchihonglee (talk) 14:41, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

BRFA filed--Gabrielchihonglee (talk) 14:49, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

@Gabrielchihonglee: Thank you very much for this - it's really appreciated. Regarding the 500 minimum edit requirement, it is based predominatly on this set of agreed criteria. I can supply you with a suggested form of words to leave on talk pages for both sets of bot runs, if this helps?

I do also have a related question about the modus operandi of your bot which you set to work on our list of adopters at WP:Adopt-a-user/Adoptee's Area/Adopters ran on 2nd Feb - for which many thanks. However, I need to look more closely at the different outcomes on the "|bot-updated=}}" field before I can phrase my question to you. Should I do this here, or follow it up on your talk page? Many thanks again, Nick Moyes (talk) 22:13, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Let's have the conversation in my talk page, so you don't need to ping me every time :) --Gabrielchihonglee (talk) 22:27, 6 February 2018 (UTC)